Her gasp was a pretty diversion; but the horror moved on and the contrasts of the moment must be forgotten. This was no mere mortal monster. I did not think a mere mortal man hid behind this obscene facade. This was a real true and
How old was this ancient thing? From what pits of hell had it been raised?
The slime dripped from its ghastly mouth and its head bent forward, so that the ruby eyes sank into mere furnace slits.
How could I spare pity for it? It should have died long and long ago, no longer needed by mankind, forgotten and allowed to sink into its tomb. But superstitious humanity had dabbled blasphemously in the black arts of Kregen and had drawn forth this horror. So a simple mortal man must drive it back from whence it came.
“It is Oidrictzhn the Abominable!” The devotees had regained their voices. They were shrieking in rhapsody, falling onto their knees, their arms uplifted in supplication. They prayed in an obsessed fervor to this Abomination. “All praise to thee, Oidrictzhn! Lahal and Lahal to the Abominable One!”
The thing slithered nearer.
And the lassitude and the weakness crept up my sword arms. I held the Ghittawrer blade with both fists, one unhandily near the other, for the hilt was not a full Krozair hilt. I struggled to think of the Krozairs then. Of Zair, of Opaz, of Djan. I tried to form words and hurl them at the Beast of Time. I wanted to shriek out that it should return to its ghastly haunts in the name of Zair; but I could not croak a word. The sword felt impossibly heavy. My arms trembled. My calves shook. My head drooped. I struggled savagely to lift my head, to lift my arms, to still the agonized trembling of my body. And the thing spoke!
Serpentlike, the hissing words garbled out through that obscene mouth.
“Puny mortal man! Foundling of Time! I demand my due!”
Only my body betrayed me. I knew what I was going to say. Oh, yes, I knew what I’d shout at the obscene thing. But it had the power, it possessed the ancient evil powers out of time and it held me in a stasis so that all my muscles could not move my body, my arms could not uphold the sword. The blade drooped and sank.
The girl struggled to her knees, her golden breast-cups jangling against the golden chains, the gems over her body glittering. She clasped my knees. But I was of no use to her. I think then, I really think, that I, Dray Prescot, lord of many titles and many lands, would have marched on my last long journey to the Ice Floes of Sicce. I really do. . I fought against occult powers that I dismissed as being the enfeebled ravings of children and idiots. But who may say what festers in the past of Kregen? Who deny the reality of that moment of horror?
The sword drooped and the point struck the ground and I leaned forward. In moments only I would topple helplessly to the ground.
And all the time the ruby fires of the thing’s eyes glared furnacelike upon me and the green ichor dripped from the gaping arch of its mouth.
I could not speak; but my mind formed words.
“Sink me!” I burst out. “A stinking slimy half-dead monstrosity with all the black arts of Tomborku to see me off with my own thirty-two-pound roundshot for company! By Zair! A fine fool I’ll look when the gray ones greet me among the Ice Floes!”
I felt the tremble in my arms. I remembered what a lady had said. The Star Lords — well, they would probably laugh to see me in this plight, for all that they could have aided me had they wished. So I thought then. As for the Savanti, they were mere mortal men, even if superhuman in their powers. They would not aid me now. Only I could aid myself, so I thought, in my usual blind arrogance and pride. And the tremble persisted and I felt the sword’s weight again and I lifted. The hilt felt incredibly good in my fists. I raised my head. The thing did not advance. Against the shadows a radiance grew. A yellow light. A yellow light that limned that ghastly head with the dripping fungoid growths depending in place of hair, that shone upon the gray walls and drove away the black shadows. Yellow. A yellow radiance.
“By God! Zena Iztar,” I said. “But you are very welcome.”
And I lifted the sword against the tearing shriek of my muscles and I struck at the leprous shape before me.
It stumbled back. I caught it a glancing blow and it keened a shrill whine. The shadows writhed and coiled and lambent blue sparks spit from the darkness. But they spit and recoiled as that glorious yellow glow strengthened. Again I lifted the sword and took a pace forward and struck. The thing shrieked again and stepped back and back. I could feel nothing, now, in my arms. Twice I had struck and twice I had missed. I, Dray Prescot, swordmaster, bladesman, Bravo-fighter, had missed this shuffling, lumpy, ichor-dripping obscenity not once but twice.
I knew then that Zena Iztar could aid me only in some way, some not-so-small way, that lifted the occult power of the force that enchained me. But I could not move forward. I was held by unnameable powers. The sword glittered in the mingled lights; it could not be impelled against that hideous shape of horror.
“By Zair! Give me but the strength for one last blow!”
Willpower, the striving, the desire, the determination, by these I might stand against the Star Lords, Zena Iztar had told me. I must summon up all my willpower and force my reluctant muscles to power my body forward.
Oidrictzhn the Abominable leered upon me with his furnace eyes of ruby fire. He saw. He moved forward and his claws raked around. One touch was death. One touch of these webbed and taloned claws would doom me for all eternity. This I knew.
I burst the bonds even as the claw raked at my face. I swung the brand and the steel shrieked and bit and green slime spouted.
The thing screamed. It staggered back.
I have scoffed at the word eldritch. But in that moment I knew what an eldritch scream sounds like. It sounds with the insane terror of pure horror.
The yellow glow began to fade.
The worshipers of this vile thing had dared not to approach. The archers had not dared to loose. The Beast from Time lurched. One claw still made feeble raking passes as it staggered back. The other claw lay on the ground at my feet and even as I looked so it gathered itself to it, and like a webbed scorpion scuttled for the shadows against the gray stone. I let it go. I know about scorpions.
“You have failed me!” the thing’s voice whispered now, weird and out of Kregen and altogether blasphemous. “I shall leave you to your fate. Oidrictzhn returns to the Abominations from which it came.”
The shadows rushed together as bats swoop about a church steeple. A noxious odor made me retch. The shadows paled and wafted and there were left only the shadows flung from the torches and streaming behind the moons’ radiance.
An arrow flicked past my ear.
I hoisted the girl. I was myself again.
I ran. That was a fair old run, a scamper across the sand and sward between the ruins until I had reached the tumbled columns and so run on, safely now, into the bushes. Only one man stood there to welcome me.
I said, “I salute you, Rukker. And the others?”
His booming laugh rang somewhat hollow. “They scuttled.”
“Then let us go down to our ships and push off. This is an evil place.”
Chapter Twelve
The mingled streaming radiance of the Suns of Scorpio filled the Eye of the World with light and color. Our little squadron bore on over a sparkling sea, with the wind in our canvas and the spray lifting whitely from our forefeet. Often I have spoken of that glorious opaz radiance of the twin suns of Antares, but seldom have I so luxuriated in the brilliance of the Suns of Scorpio as on the morning following that ghastly nighted encounter with Oidrictzhn of the Abominations.
