The Lure of the Basilisk

CHAPTER NINE

Pausing at the cellar doorway, Garth reached in his pack for his mirror. He didn't find it; instead he cut a thumb on a razor-sharp shard of glass. The mirror had been shattered by one of the falls he had taken that morning.

Turning back to the kitchen, he once again observed the array of mirrors Shang had set up; they were, as yet, an unexplained mystery. Perhaps they had been somehow intended as a defense against the basilisk. That seemed unreasonable to Garth; surely, if he could tolerate the reflection of the monster's gaze, such a reflection couldn't bother the basilisk itself. Still, Shang must have had something in mind.

Therefore, Garth collected the mirrors and stacked them face down in a corner, taking the smallest to replace his own shattered glass. This done, he made his way cautiously down the cellar stairs, keeping his eyes fixed on the mirror. He wished that the iron railing were still there; he was decidedly unsteady on his scorched bare feet.

The vast chamber was still unbearably hot, but the red glow had died. Garth found himself in gloom alleviated only by the dim gray light that trickled in through the broken doorway. He had to grope to find the talisman. His hand fell upon it at last, and he picked it up, moving back up a step or two, further from the hot ashes that still covered the bottom treads.

The basilisk hissed in annoyance; it was still alive and still confined. Garth breathed a sigh of relief. He considered leaving the creature where it was while he devised a cover for its magical enclosure, but decided that it would be better to remove it from the heat. He had not seen it, and its hissing sounded as healthy as ever, but he doubted it could be happy where it was.

Thus decided, he began hauling the resisting talisman up the steps, struggling to keep his footing. His progress was slow, and he found it necessary to drop his mirror so that his hands were free to use in steadying himself. He closed his eyes and inched upward, dropping to his hands and knees as his tortured soles protested.

The basilisk hissed again, more loudly; in fact, it kept up a steady racket for several minutes, until he was clambering out into the kitchen once more, when it abruptly ceased. He feared that the creature had succumbed, but dared not look back to see. Instead he proceeded on through the open door to the next room, and was immensely relieved when the resistance on the wooden rod suddenly vanished, indicating that the basilisk was again moving under its own power. Once he had that confirmation of its survival, he put down the talisman and shut the door, so that he would not accidentally meet the monster's gaze.

Now he needed something to cover the invisible cage with, or at the very least to rig an opaque barrier of some sort to keep between the warbeast and the basilisk. A large piece of fabric, or several such pieces sewn together, would be perfect. He looked at the tapestries that hung on every wall, but rejected them; they were heavy, and would add too much weight to Koros' burden. A better supply of fabric was available.

He found his way to the entry hall again, and out into the square. The sun had set, and the long shadows were blending into the gathering twilight. Koros was waiting, obediently. It growled slightly upon seeing its master emerge. Garth heard the sound and recognized it as a growl of hunger rather than greeting; already it had digested much of its most recent victim, and had yet to make up fully for its prolonged fast. It was, Garth decided, warning him.

He approached it, patted its muzzle, and stroked its triangular, catlike ears. It made no sound, but merely flattened its ears back against its broad skull. It was not in a mood properly to appreciate such gestures. Garth removed his hand and told it, "Hunt."

Immediately it pricked up its ears again, turned, and trotted away down the avenue that led to the city gate. It would be a long time before it returned, Garth was certain; there was no game to be found in Mormoreth Valley. It would have to find its way to the mountains, track and kill sufficient wildlife to satisfy its vast appetite, then return. Such an enterprise would give him more than enough time to sew a covering from the canopies and curtains of the market's abandoned merchants' stalls.

It was, he discovered, very pleasant to sit and rest, to get off his mistreated feet. He reposed briefly on the palace steps, watching the crimson sunset fade from the western sky, as he considered what he needed. He was unsure of the exact dimensions of the enclosure, most particularly of its height; it seemed to extend for perhaps twenty feet, and could be assumed to be a hemisphere. Its center was at least ten feet high, as he recalled from the occasion in the Annamar Pass when he had been the one enclosed. He would assume that such was its size. If it were less, the extra fabric could drag, or be trimmed away; if it were more, additional cloth could be sewn on. It would take several of the canopies, most of which were less than ten feet across.

He would need needle and thread, of course, but those could doubtless be found in the chambers formerly occupied by the palace women.

The journey back to Skelleth would need provisions, as well; the thought reminded him that he was ravenously hungry. It had been so long since he last ate that he had grown used to the aching in his belly and come to ignore it-particularly since he had been kept busy by other concerns.

One of which had led him to leave the basilisk in the kitchen. A nuisance, that. Still, upon consideration, he decided that food was his first priority. There was no longer any need for haste.

It proved, upon mirrored investigation, that the basilisk was asleep in a corner. Garth did not disturb it by moving the barrier, but crept in as quietly as he could and ransacked those cabinets not cut off by the invisible enclosure. The selection was somewhat limited, since the wall made perhaps a fourth of the cupboards inaccessible, but the overman found several shelves of wine, a large quantity of salted beef sewn in linen to prevent insects from contaminating it, several baskets of reasonably fresh fruit, and other viands sufficient to provide him with a feast such as he had rarely enjoyed. He lost track of time shortly after he had moved his booty into the next room, shut the kitchen door, and lit several candles. He was aware at one point that he had drunk more wine than was wise, and at another that he was extraordinarily sleepy, but most of the evening was simply a blur. He awoke the next day wrapped comfortably in a thick woolen tapestry depicting several nude women dancing about a fountain, with a pain in his belly, a dry throat, and vague memories of unpleasant dreams full of evil, reptilian eyes. The sun was pouring through the courtyard windows, and a glance at the angle told him that it was almost noon. The candles he had lit had all burned down to puddles of congealed wax.

He started to rise, then abruptly changed his mind; the burns on his feet had developed into an oozing, peeling mass of blisters.

Ruefully considering this, it struck him how little life resembled the tales told of past heroes. In the stories, when a quest had attained its goal and those opposing the hero had been slain, the story was at an end. There was never any mention made of difficulties in getting the object of the quest back home.

Wincing, he managed to struggle to his feet. A nearby table held the remains of the preceding night's banquet, and he scraped together a satisfactory breakfast from the leftovers. After he had eaten, the ache in his belly was less, though still there-undoubtedly the result of gorging himself after a fast, stretching the stomach unmercifully. Half a bottle of some unfamiliar golden wine removed the dryness from his throat. He began to feel somewhat better, despite the mess his feet were in. His head seemed remarkably clear now that he was no longer suffering from exhaustion and the peripheral vapors of the basilisk. He rather dreaded the necessity of opening the kitchen door eventually; the atmosphere in there must be quite unhealthy by now.

Fortunately; it could still be put off. He had not yet made a cover for the invisible cage, and that would take a good bit of time. Reluctantly he rose from his breakfast and, tottering on his blisters, set out in search of a needle and thread strong enough for his purpose.

After an hour's search he located a needle and supply of heavy thread in a back storeroom, apparently intended for the repair of saddles; it seemed perfect. He limped back across the courtyard and out into the market, blinking in the noon sun, and began collecting fallen canopies.

Koros returned from its hunt when the shadows were of a length equal with their sources, the hour of midafternoon. Garth had sewn together a dozen large pieces of fabric into a gaily patterned circle a little over thirty feet across, and was debating with himself as to whether it would be sufficient. Koros' return. decided him; he would risk it, and maybe get a start on his journey to Skelleth.

He wondered what the warbeast had found to eat. It seemed well fed, though there was little or none of the usual blood on its mouth. It didn't matter, of course, as long as the animal was satisfied.

It would be necessary to get Koros out of sight of the market temporarily while the cover was put on the cage. Garth had already decided that it would be impractical to try and cover the enclosure while it was still in the palace, where it would become entangled at every doorway. The barrier seemed to accommodate its width to doorways, but the cover, being ordinary cloth, would not be so cooperative.

He led the warbeast to a convenient alley and instructed it to wait. Then it was a matter of mere minutes to fetch the basilisk out and drape the covering over the enclosure. It fit admirably; the cage proved to be about twenty feet in diameter and ten feet high, as he had guessed, so that the skirts of the cover were easily made to touch ground on all sides but did not drag more than a few inches. They did tend to flap somewhat in the breeze, so Garth took the time to lash the chains he had carried in his pack throughout the entire adventure in place at the bottom edges, gratified to be getting some use from them after having gone to the trouble of dragging them about for so long. The added weight acted to keep the cover exactly in place. Standing back a few paces, Garth admired his handiwork; the basilisk could not be seen, and Koros was safe-and so was he. He could look around without worrying about mirrors and such. All there was to be seen was a large hemispherical tent. The basilisk apparently didn't much like its new habitat; it was hissing angrily in protest. He ignored its complaints. He had only agreed to bring it back alive, not to bring it back happy and contented.

It was a matter of minutes to summon Koros, tuck the wooden talisman securely into the warbeast's harness, and mount, removing at long last the weight on his feet. He had become so used to walking on them that the lessening of that pain resulted in a burst of euphoria, as if he were pleasantly drunk. He felt like singing; unfortunately, he knew no songs, and doubted he could carry a tune if he did. Overmen were notoriously unmusical. Instead he chanted, reciting an elaborately bloodthirsty historical saga that he had learned as a child. As Koros strode through the streets of Mormoreth toward the ruined city gate, Garth lost himself in chanting the tale of one of his own ancestors who had single-handedly held a city in the long-ago Racial Wars between men and overmen, the wars that had driven the outnumbered overmen into the Northern Waste.

He had done it, he told himself between stanzas; he had captured the basilisk, and was now riding comfortably with his quarry dragging behind him, its tentlike covering apparently moving of its own power as it followed Koros without any visible attachment. He was safe from the wizard Shang; though he had not truly defeated him, nonetheless the wizard was dead and no longer a threat. He was well fed, his wounds were minor and healing. Life seemed very pleasant.

This happy mood could not last; it was ruined when he reached the city gates and realized that the basilisk's carefully prepared enclosure would not fit through them. Garth broke off his chant in annoyance. It proved necessary to lead Koros well away along the curvature of the city walls, then to drag the cloth covering off and out the gate, then to move the enclosure out and reassemble the whole affair. After the brief respite, the pain in his feet was worse than ever; he limped badly as he struggled with the recalcitrant basilisk and its uncooperative cage. When he was again mounted and moving, he turned sidesaddle and did what he could to clean and bandage the ruined soles, which were now oozing blood and pus in equal and copious amounts. The sun was well down the western sky, and the shadows did nothing to aid him. In all, when he at last turned his face forward once more, he had little inclination to resume his chant. Instead he began to wonder blackly what the Forgotten King could want with a basilisk.

It seemed quite plain that the old man had known all along what Garth would encounter. Why else would he have sent the overman on such an errand? There was no point in wondering how he had known that the only living thing in the crypts was a basilisk; he had known, most likely through magic. Further, he had not told Garth. Why? To avoid frightening him into abandoning the bargain? It seemed unlikely that the Forgotten King had so badly misjudged his new servant. No, the old man had wanted Garth to be ill prepared. Two possibilities came of that conclusion: either the King had wanted Garth to fail, to die attempting the almost-impossible task, or he had wanted to provide a severe test of Garth's resourcefulness. Perhaps it was a combination; perhaps the task was intended to end in either success or death. The former would prove Garth to the King, and the latter would remove a nuisance.

But there must be thousands of possible quests that would serve such an end. It would have been much simpler to order him to duel to the death with some formidable antagonist. The King must have some use for the basilisk, then; or maybe he considered Shang to be an enemy. No, in that case he would have sent Garth to kill Shang. He had some use for the basilisk.

What possible use is a basilisk?

It provided an unlimited supply of poison, of course, and could be used to turn people to stone. That was why Shang had wanted it. Could the Forgotten King be planning to do to Skelleth what Shang did to Mormoreth? If so, Garth wanted no part of it. Or perhaps he intended to use the basilisk against someone else; the High King at Kholis, perhaps, or worst of all, against Garth's own people, to finish what the Racial Wars started three hundred years ago.

Whatever the old man had in mind, Garth had little doubt it was something evil; it was hard to imagine how the basilisk could be used for anything that was not in essence evil. It was a creature of death. As be had told himself in the crypts, if there were gods, the basilisk served the god of death, the being humans called the Final God. He tried to recall everything he knew of that god; there was very little. There was a myth that any being who spoke the true name of the Death-God would die instantly, unless he had already sold himself to an evil power. Also, the Final God had brothers and sisters. Garth had no idea what the forbidden name might be, nor which of the thousands of gods were kin to Death.

If the basilisk were in truth a creature of the Death God, then did the Forgotten King serve him as well? If so, Garth thought, he might well come to regret his bargain. He wanted no truck with the forces of evil; they were already far too strong for his liking. If he had to sell his life for the immortality of his name, he might settle for a lesser degree of fame.

He would have to discuss matters more thoroughly with the Forgotten King.

The sun was down before he had covered a third of the distance to the foothills of the Annamar Pass, but Garth ignored the darkness and kept Koros moving, dragging the huge cloth cage down the highway. Even in the darkness it was hard to lose one's way, since the road was bounded on either side by high grass. An occasional glance backward in the gathering gloom showed that the vegetation in the unkept roadway and for a few feet on either side withered and died as the basilisk's cage passed over it, further proof, were any needed, of the virulence of the monster's poison.

It was some time around midnight that Garth reached the spot where he had camped before entering Mormoreth, where he had separated from Elmil. It seemed as good a place as any to spend the remainder of the night, he decided. It took perhaps five minutes to unburden the warbeast and secure the Sealing Rod, and five seconds to fall asleep. His last waking thought was to wonder what use the Forgotten King had in mind for the basilisk.

His sleep was uneasy, troubled once again by dreams in which his eyes met the basilisk's gaze, dreams of feeling once again the numbness of the Cold Death as the monster and the Forgotten King watched him perish. Finally, he awoke, to find Elmil standing over him, propped on a rude crutch, with a sword naked in his hand.

He started to rise, but stopped when the bandit made a threatening motion with his sword. Reluctantly, he lay back.

"Greetings, overman."

Garth said nothing.

"You broke your word. I thought the word of an overman was good."

Astonished, Garth said nothing. His eyes widened slightly, but Elmil, having as little experience with overmen as Garth had with humans, noticed nothing.

"Have you an explanation?"

"I am unaware as to how I broke my word."

"You swore that you would not slay Dansin."

"I did not slay Dansin."

"You swore your beast would not slay Dansin."

Garth started to speak, then halted. He had not foreseen such a possibility. He would have to be more careful when setting Koros free to hunt-assuming he lived long enough to do anything. Choosing his words carefully, he said, "I did not order it to slay Dansin."

"Yet it did so."

"I was not aware of this"

Elmil's voice was controlled and steady. Garth could not tell if the bandit was suppressing fear, or rage, or hatred, or was merely tensing in preparation for the kill. "Your beast devoured Dansin without provocation, though you swore it would not."

"It was hungry."

"So you let it feed on my comrade?"

"I did not know what it ate. I was in Mormoreth. I had been trapped in the crypts beneath the palace for several days, and Koros had not been fed. It killed and ate Shang, but was still hungry. I set it free to hunt. I did not know that it would kill Dansin, nor even that he was in the area. Had I not let it hunt, it might have turned on me."

The point of Elmil's sword moved slightly away from Garth's throat. "Shang is dead?"

"Yes."

"You killed him?"

"Koros killed him."

"What is in that tent?" He nodded toward the magic cage.

"The basilisk."

"Basilisk?"

"The monster I was sent to capture."

"What kind of monster?"

"A very poisonous one. Its gaze will turn one to stone."

Elmil said nothing.

"It was the basilisk that permitted Shang to turn the people of Mormoreth to stone. He collected its venom."

"I don't believe it."

"Then look for yourself."

Emil managed a feeble grin. "Maybe I do believe you, after all."

"Good. May I get up?"

Elmil hobbled back and permitted Garth to sit up. Remembering the sorry condition of his feet, the overman declined to stand.

"You still broke your word."

"True, though it was unintentional. My apologies, though I realize they can do little to comfort you or Dansin."

"It is the custom among my people to pay for a man's death."

"I have little to give for blood-money." An idea struck him. "Except, that is, for the city of Mormoreth, which I took from Shang. Will you accept the city as weregild?"

It was Elmil's turn to be astonished.

"As you know, the people of Mormoreth are no more and, now that Shang is dead, the city is empty. It's a good city, though there are a few broken doors and rather a lot of statues."

"It is a farmer's city." The barbarian's tone was uncertain, belying his words of rejection.

"Cannot bandits learn farming? Surely it's a more profitable trade, and it is definitely safer."

Elmil grinned. "Very well, Garth Oath-Breaker, we will accept your payment for Dansin's life."

"Good."

"The sun is well up. Will you be riding soon?"

"I suppose I shall."

"Perhaps I will accompany you as far as the South Road."

"If you wish."

"It will be a great surprise to my tribe to hear that we now own the Valley of Mormoreth."

"You paid heavily for it; eleven of your tribesmen are dead."

"True. Those of us who survive will have to take extra wives to compensate."

Garth was unsure whether this was a joke, a fact to be regretted or a pleasurable circumstance, so he said nothing. Human sexuality was utterly incomprehensible to him.

The conversation ceased, and Garth rose, limping, to saddle Koros.