Panting up at my side Nath the Slinger said, ‘The lights up there aren’t ours.”
I halted. Duhrra and Vax appeared. Some way beyond them a knot of men I knew would be loyal not only to Zair but to me pressed on, I shouted at them, intemperately, and they clustered around. Before I spoke I looked up. In the lights of the moons the mass of Renders ascending into the ruins looked apelike, crowding up, bearing torches. The Katakis were there. I looked at Vax and Fazhan and Duhrra. I told them what I wanted them to do. I did not mince my words.
“And if there’s a watch,” I said, most unpleasantly, “knock him on the head and spirit him away. Do not kill him, though.”
Duhrra rumbled a hoarse chuckle.
“Duh — master! A fine plan!”
“Aye,” said Fazhan. “Just rewards, by Zair.”
“And if there is a fight,” said Vax, half drawing his beautiful new sword, “I shall joy in showing this boastful Kataki Rukker he may join the cramph Athgar.”
“You will not fight him unless I tell you.” I looked hard at Vax in the streaming moons-light. “He will not succumb so easily as Athgar.”
“Yet is he a Kataki, and Katakis have tails.”
“And with them they rip out throats of young coys.”
He was beginning to know a little of me, enough to understand that I might argue with him in some matters, and in others he had best obey, schtump. All the same, he looked daggers at me.
“Take Tamil the Palinter with you. He is adept at weighing and measuring.”
“Aye, master.”
“I shall entertain Rukker until you signal. Now, jump!”
I intended to be scrupulously fair. What I intended was perfectly obvious, of course; but if my men did not do a quick clean job there would be a fight. Renders habitually quarrel and fight; it is all a part of their image, Articles or no. As they took themselves off I wondered if I was doing this out of mere irritation with myself, out of a sense that time was rushing by and I had made no progress, and played this trick not so much out of evil boredom as out of self-contempt.
Then I ran lightly up the trail in the cliff toward the ruins of the Sunset People and the mysteries that might await me there.
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
“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.”
