A Coven of Vampires (10 page)

“I’ve not forgotten,” he forced the words from throat dry as the desert itself. “Your perfume gives you away, Orbiquita—and your kiss shall burn on my neck and in my memory forever!” He took a step toward the turret.

“Hold!”
she hissed from the shadows, where now a greater darkness moved uncertainly, its agitation accompanied by scraping as of many knives on stone. “Come no closer, Hrossak. It’s no clean-limbed, soft-breasted girl stands here now.”

“I know that well enow,” Tarra croaked. “What do you want with me?”

“With you—nothing. But with that pair who put me to such trial in the desert—”

“They are dead,” Tarra stopped her.

“What?” (Again the clashing of knives.) “Dead? That were a pleasure I had promised myself!”

“Then blame your disappointment on some other, Orbiquita,” Tarra spoke into darkness. “Though certainly I would have killed them, if Fregg hadn’t beaten me to it.”

“Fregg, is it?” she hissed. “Scum murders scum. Well, King Fregg has robbed me, it seems.”

“Both of us,” Tarra told her. “You of your revenge, me of more worldly pleasures—a good many of them. Right now I’m on my way to take a few back.”

The blackness in the turret stirred, moved closer to the door. Her voice was harsher now, the words coming more quickly, causing Tarra to draw back from brimstone breath. “What of my rune-book?”

“Arenith Han, Fregg’s sorcerer, will have that,” the Hrossak answered.

“And where is he?”

“He lives in Fregg’s palace, beneath his master’s tower.”

“Good! Show me this place.” She inched forward again and for a moment the moonlight gleamed on something unbearable. Gasping, Tarra averted his eyes, pointed a trembling hand out over the city.

“There,” he said, his voice breaking a little. “That high tower there with the light. That’s where Fregg and his mage dwell, well guarded and central within the palace walls.”

“What are guards and walls to me?” she said, and he heard the scrape of her clawed feet and felt the heat of her breath on the back of his neck. “What say you we visit this pair together?”

Rooted to the spot, not daring to look back, Tarra answered: “I’m all for companionship, Orbiquita, but—”

“So be it!” She was closer still. “And since you can’t bear to look at me, close your eyes. Also, put away that knife—It would not scratch my scales.”

Gritting his teeth, Tarra did both things—and at once felt himself grasped, lifted up, crushed to a hot, stinking, scaly body. Wings of leather creaked open in the night; wind rushed all about; all was dizzy, soaring, whirling motion. Then—

Tarra felt his feet touch down and was released. He staggered, sprawled, opened his eyes and sprang erect. Again he stood upon a parapet; on one hand a low balcony wall, overlooking the city, and on the other an arabesqued archway issuing warm, yellow light. Behind him, stone steps winding down, where even now something dark descended on scythe feet! Orbiquita, going in search of her rune-book.

“Who’s there?” came sharp voice of inquiry from beyond the arched entrance. “Is that you, Arenith? And didn’t I say not to disturb me at my sorting and counting?”

It was Fregg—Fregg all alone, with no bully boys to protect him now—which would make for a meeting much more to Tarra’s liking. And after all, he’d been invited, hadn’t he?

Invited or not, the shock on Fregg’s face as Tarra entered showed all too clearly how the robber-king had thought never to see him again. Indeed, it was as if Fregg gazed upon a ghost, which might say something about the errand of the two who’d followed Tarra across the plain; an errand unfulfilled, as Fregg now saw. He half came to his feet, then slumped down again with hands atop the huge oak table that stood between.

“Good evening, Majesty,” said Tarra Khash, no hint of malice in his voice. “I’ve come for my broken sword, remember?” He looked all about the circular, dome-ceilinged room, where lamps on shelves gave plenty of light. And now the Hrossak saw what a magpie this jowly bandit really was. Why, ’twere a wonder the many shelves had room for Fregg’s lamps at all—for they were each and every one stacked high with stolen valuables of every sort and description! Here were jade idols and goblets, and more jade in chunks unworked. Here were silver statuettes, plates, chains and trinkets galore. Here were sacklets of very precious gems, and larger sacks of semi-precious stones. Here was gold and scrolls of gold-leaf, bangles of the stuff hanging from nails like so many hoops on pegs, and brooches, and medallions on golden chains, and trays of rings all burning yellow. But inches deep on the great table, and as yet unsorted, there lay Fregg’s greatest treasure—which, oh so recently, had belonged to Tarra Khash.

“Your sword?” Fregg forced a smile more a grimace onto his face, fingered his beard, continued to stare at his visitor as if hypnotized. But at last animation: he stood up, slapped his thigh, roared with laughter and said, “Why of course, your broken sword!” Then he sobered. “It’s here somewhere, I’m sure. But alas, I’ve not yet had time to remove the gems.” His eyes rapidly swept the table, narrowing as they more slowly returned to the Hrossak’s face.

Tarra came closer, watching the other as a cat watches a mouse, attuned to every breath, to each slightest movement. “Nor will there be time, I fancy,” he said.

“Eh?” said Fregg; and then, in imitation of Tarra’s doomful tone: “Is that to be the way of it? Well, before we decide upon all that—first tell me, Hrossak, how it is you’ve managed to come here, to this one place in all Chlangi which I had thought impregnable?”

Before Tarra could answer there came from below a shrill, wavering cry borne first of shock, then disbelief, finally terror—cut off most definitely at zenith. Skin prickling, knowing that indeed Orbiquita had found Arenith Han, Tarra com menced an involuntary turn—and knew his mistake on the instant. Already he had noted, upon a shelf close to where Fregg sat, a small silver crossbow, with silver bolt loaded in groove and string ready-nocked. Turning back to robber-king he fell to one knee, his right hand and arm a blur of motion. Tarra’s knife thrummed like a harp where its blade was fixed inches deep in shelf’s soft wood, pinning Fregg’s fat hand there even as it reached for weapon. And upon that pinned hand, glinting on the smallest finger, a ring of gold inset with jade cut in a skull and serpent crest.

Blood spurted and Fregg slumped against the shelves—but not so heavily that his weight put stress on the knife. “M-mercy!” he croaked, but saw little of mercy in the hulking steppe-man’s eyes. Gasping his pain, he reached trembling free hand toward the knife transfixing the other.

In a scattering of gems and baubles Tarra vaulted the table, his heels slamming into Fregg’s face. The bandit was hurled aside, his hand split neatly between second and third fingers by the keen blade! Screaming Fregg fell, all thought of fighting back relinquished now to agony most intense from riven paw. Gibbering he sprawled upon the floor amidst scattering gems and nuggets, while Tarra stood spread-legged and filled the scabbard at his back, then topped his loot with hilt of shattered sword.

Until, “Enough!” he said. “I’ve got what I came for.”

“But I have not!” came Orbiquita’s monstrous hiss from the archway.

Tarra turned, saw her, went weak at the knees. Now he looked full upon a lamia, and knew all the horror of countless others gone before him. And yet he found the strength to answer her as were she his sister: “You did not find your rune-book?”

“The book, aye,” her breath was sulphur. “Mylakhrion’s ring, no. Have you seen it, Tarra Khash? A ring of gold with skull and serpent crest?”

Edging past her, Tarra gulped and nodded in Fregg’s direction where he sat, eyes bugging, his quivering back to laden shelves. “Of that matter, best speak to miserable monarch there,” he told her.

Orbiquita’s claws flexed and sank deep into the stone floor as she hunched toward the now drooling, keening robber-king.

“Farewell,” said Tarra, leaping out under the archway and to the parapet wall, and fixing his grapnel there.

From below came hoarse shouts, cries of outrage, the clatter of many feet ascending the tower’s corkscrew stairs. “Farewell,” came Orbiquita’s hiss as Tarra swung himself out and down into the night. “Go swiftly, Hrossak, and fear no hand at your back. I shall attend to that.”

After that—

All was a chaos of flight, of hideous screams fading into distance behind, of climbing, falling, of running and riding, until Chlangi was a blot, then less than a blot, then vanished altogether into distance behind him. Somewhere along the way Stumpy Adz dragged him to a gasping, breathless halt, however brief, gawped at a handful of gems, disappeared dancing into shadows; and somewhere else Tarra cracked a head when unknown assailant leaped on him from hiding; other than which he remembered very little.

And through all of that wild panic flight, only once did Tarra Khash look back—of which he wished he likewise had no recall.

For then…he had thought to see against the face of the moon a dark shape flying, whose outlines he knew well. And dangling beneath, a fat flopping shape whose silhouette seemed likewise familiar. And he thought the dangling thing screamed faintly in the thin, chill air of higher space, and he thought he saw its fitful kicking. Which made him pray it was only his imagination, or a dark cloud fleeing west.

And after that he put it firmly out of his mind.

As for Orbiquita:

She hated being in anyone’s debt. This should square the matter. Fregg would make hearty breakfast for a hungry sister waking up from five long years of stony vigil….

RECOGNITION

1.

As to why I asked you all to join me here, and why I’m making it worth your while by paying each of you five hundred pounds for your time and trouble, the answer is simple: the place appears to be haunted, and I want rid of the ghost.”

The speaker was young, his voice cultured, his features fine and aristocratic. He was Lord David Marriot, and the place of which he spoke was a Marriot property: a large, ungainly, mongrel architecture of dim and doubtful origins, standing gaunt and gloomily atmospheric in an acre of brooding oaks. The wood itself stood central in nine acres of otherwise barren moors borderland. 

Lord Marriot’s audience numbered four: the sprightly octogenarian Lawrence Danford, a retired man of the cloth; by contrast the so-called “mediums” Jonathan Turnbull and Jason Lavery, each a “specialist” in his own right; and myself, an old friend of the family whose name does not really matter since I had no special part to play. I was simply there as an observer—an advisor, if you like—in a matter for which, from the beginning, I had no great liking. 

Waiting on the arrival of the others, I had been with David Marriot at the old house all afternoon. I had long known something of the history of the place…and a little of its legend. There I now sat, comfortable and warm as our host addressed the other three, with an excellent sherry in my hand while logs crackled away in the massive fireplace. And yet suddenly, as he spoke, I felt chill and uneasy.

“You two gentlemen,” David smiled at the mediums, “will employ your special talents to discover and define the malig nancy, if indeed such an element exists; and you, sir,” he spoke to the elderly cleric, “will attempt to exorcise the unhappy—creature?—once we know who or what it is.” Attracted by my involuntary agitation, frowning, he paused and turned to me. “Is something troubling you, my friend…?”

“I’m sorry to have to stop you almost before you’ve started, David,” I apologized, “but I’ve given it some thought and—well, this plan of yours worries me.”

Lord Marriot’s guests looked at me in some surprise, seeming to notice me for the first time, although of course we had been introduced; for after all they were the experts while I was merely an observer. Nevertheless, and while I was never endowed with any special psychic talent that I know of (and while certainly, if ever I had been, I never would have dabbled), I did know a little of my subject and had always been interested in such things.

And who knows?—perhaps I do have some sort of sixth sense, for as I have said, I was suddenly and quite inexplic ably chilled with a sensation of foreboding that I knew had nothing at all to do with the temperature of the library. The others, for all their much-vaunted special talents, apparently felt nothing.