A Fortune for Kregen (30 page)

“This is a Trap-Volzoid. He can leap for perhaps three or four paces. He is waiting for you to walk into range.”

“Let him wait, notor!” called Nodgen.

Hunch said, “The door is this way.” He started to walk to the portal through which we had entered — a long time ago.

I said, “Will the harpy with the golden hair open it for you?”

The torches still burned above the gates. But they were fast closed, and the iron bars and studs did not look rusty.

“Oh, by Tryflor — have mercy!”

The others went across to the door. They banged on it. It did not open. Nothing happened.

“Right,” I called. “You’ve had your fun. Now scoop up handfuls of dust — large handfuls — and when I yell cast them up into that corner. Make the dust thick.”

“You think to blind it, Jak?”

“Long enough for me to reach the corner.”

“You take a terrible—”

“That is what this is all about. Now, doms, ready!”

I yelled, the gathered dust flew up in a thick black sheet, and I went hurtling forward for the corner expecting to feel a fetid breath envelop me and razor-sharp fangs encircle my neck and find my head inside the capacious mouth of the Trap-Volzoid.

The dust smothered everywhere and I crashed into the wall.

Winded, I clung to the dusty stone. After a space I could see the other’s faces like full moons rising through the dust cloud. I began to feel for the catch in the wall and found the right knob after a space and pressed. The door in the wall swung inwards.

I turned back.

“The last one—”

“I will go last!” declared Prince Tyfar.

“Wait!” I said crossly. “Logu and Modo. You next. We will go up and deal with the Trap-Volzoid. Then the last will cross in safety.” The two Pachaks nodded, pleased I had selected them for their superb fighting ability in confined spaces.

We went up a narrow stone stair and crept out into a hollow and stinking place filled with detritus and bones. The Trap-Volzoid crouched on the lip of the bulge, looking away from us, ready to leap the moment an unsuspecting man walked within range.

The Krozair longsword bit, the Pachaks swung — and the damned thing, wounded and hissing, leaped out into the dusty hall.

In the end Tyfar and his men finished it off. It lay, a leathery ball, fanged and vicious and stinking, and the men stood back and looked up at us in the bulge and shouted.

So, up the winding stair we all went, and I led over the protestations of Tyfar, and we went with naked steel in our fists.

“I am beginning to think, my dear Jak,” said Quienyin as he puffed up the steep and narrow stairs, speaking over the heads of the two Pachaks who followed me — Tyfar brought up the rear — “that this may count as being Outside the Moder.”

The others would not guess the significance of that. But, if he was right!

“I pray Djan you are right, San.”

“Mind my foot, you fambly!” came Nodgen’s indignant voice, followed at once by Hunch, saying, “This is too scary for me!”

They were good fellows... We went on and the narrow stair gave onto a tiny landing where a skeleton leered at us and an arched lenken door with its bronze studs all green shut off the way.

“This is not a case for magic, I think,” said Tyfar, and Quienyin closed his mouth. Hunch stepped forward and looked at the door and the lock. He pursed up his Tryfant mouth.

“Looks normal enough. Nothing to fear there—” He started working his dagger about in the lock and, after a surprisingly short time, the catch snicked back and he pushed the door open.

When we were all inside the room, which was harmless, I said: “You showed skill in opening the lock, Hunch, but—”

“Oh, well, notor,” he said, spreading his hands, “everyone has to have a trade.”

“Maybe so. But, next time, do not push the door open so recklessly — else!”

Hunch the Tryfant went green.

We eased out into a passageway. It was paneled in painted wood, carpets covered the floor, there were exotic vases with flowers, and paintings and carvings against the wall. The air smelled sweet and yet there hung in the warmed air the faintest smell of tangs, as of sweet rottenness.

What followed I would prefer to pass over swiftly. But my narrative would be incomplete if I did not attempt to convey the sense of disgust which pervaded us as we investigated that palace. For it was a palace. We were prowling among the luxurious chambers of the towers perched atop the Moder. Yes —

we had penetrated to the lair of the Moder-lord himself. Or — itself...

The sights we saw there made us realize that our stomachs were not as tough as perhaps we had thought.

We spoke in hushed whispers.

“I am uneasy, Quienyin. It seems to me we have gained entrance here too easily. A mere Trap-Volzoid?

A skeleton that did not move?” The air carried that sweet smell of putrefaction. “We are being sucked into a trap.”

“Oh, yes, my dear Jak. Indubitably.”

I glanced quickly at Quienyin. He stood by tall curtains of thick dark blue damask. He looked —

different. The air of being an old buffer fell away from him. Although men on Kregen do not materially alter as they age through over two hundred years of adult life, until the very end, the change in him was profound. His eye was clearer, the lines around nose and mouth fined away. He walked with an alert step.

“Your powers—?”

“Not all. Some. Enough to bring us here and not notice what the Moder-lord had spread for our destruction.”

I let my breath out. I have said that the powers of the Wizards of Loh are very real and very terrible.

Perhaps this very exhibition of them, unconscious as it was, chilled me most.

“What—?” said Prince Tyfar.

Quickly, on a breath, I said, “We have come far enough. We must find a way out. A normal way.”

“If there be such a normal thing in this devil’s cauldron,” growled Nodgen.

“Bound to be,” said Hunch. “Got to be — hasn’t there?”

We had crossed through most of this palace from the entrance we had found and so I said, “A stairway down near the outside. There has to be one somewhere.”

Walking along the corridor, warily, we entered a chamber through draped crimson curtains. The room glittered with gold. Everything, it seemed, was fabricated of gold. A golden cage stood in a corner, with a golden statue of a creature none of us had ever seen before. Then Tyfar started, pointing.

“Look, by Krun! So one of us had the same idea. Perhaps he knows the way out—?”

The figure in the red and green checked cloak turned.

The hood fell back.

We all gasped.

The head was hairless — and lipless and noseless and earless. The skin was of a gray-green marbling, deeply fissured by furrows that turned the whole head into a ghastly parody of humanity. The face looked as though decay and dissolution, well advanced, had been halted and petrified. Thick green sinews stretched between the chin and the neck of the checkered robe. And the eyes — black and red, and demoniacal in their intensity of hate!

“You are welcome,” said Tyr Ungovich. “I had not expected you, but here you are—”

“You did not expect us,” I said. “And, Ungovich, tell me a riddle, as you love them so. Why should you live?”

No readable expression crossed that gruesome countenance.

“Surely it is you who should answer that?”

I put my hand to the hilt of the Krozair longsword — and it was not there.

Nothing remained of what I had taken from the fire-crystal opening that provided what I lacked. But those replacements I had taken from the Mausoleum, the Hall of Flame, these remained.

I touched the hilt of the rapier.

“Steel will not harm me.” The red and green checks stirred as Ungovich swung about, sharply. “And now you die!”

He put a golden whistle to his mouth and blew.

No sound issued.

He blew again, the ghastly gray-green marbling of his cheeks pulsing. Again and again he blew. He swung to face us, and the eyes blazed in unholy anger — demoniac.

“I am the Wizard of the Moder! You will die when my pets—”

Quietly, Deb-Lu-Quienyin said, “I do not think they heard your call, San.”

The exquisite irony of that formal salutation of San was not lost on us — nor on the Wizard of the Moder.

He peered closely at Quienyin.

Then he moved back, sharply, and — from nowhere — a sword appeared in his left hand.

“You—” he said, and his words were a thick choke. “You are—”

“Yes.”

“But none enters here! None! It is not permitted!”

This — thing — had caused us great grief. It had set traps for us, riddles, hurled occult monsters upon us, tortured us. Now it stood there, slashing a sword about, mewling, fiery-eyed, and helpless in the grip of those awesome powers of a Wizard of Loh.

“Let me shaft it and have done,” said Nath.

“Let me put a bullet between its yes,” said Barkindrar.

Hunch goggled.

Nodgen hefted his spear.

The two Pachak hyr-paktuns set themselves, as ever, ready for what might befall.

I said, “We came here of our own free will. We have taken treasure from this thing. Let us not slay it.”

“No?” breathed Tyfar. He was shaking.

“It protected its honored dead,” said Quienyin, “and the protection turned ugly, became a game, a game of death.”

“I didn’t come here of my own free will,” said Hunch. “By Tryflor, I said as much at the time!”

“By the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh, nor me!” quoth Nodgen.

“Nor did I,” I said. “But most of us did. We agreed to this thing’s terms for its abominable game. We have exposed it. I think that wounds it sorely.”

“Wound it!” said Nath the Shaft. His bow lifted, the arrow nocked. “I’ll wound it past the Ice Floes of Sicce!”

“Together, Nath,” said Barkindrar. His sling swung suggestively.

The thing that called itself Ungovich hissed at us.

“Should we kill it?” whispered Tyfar.

“Men kill things they do not understand. Do we understand this thing, this Moder-lord? Do we descry why it does what it does?”

“You have the right of it, Jak,” said Quienyin. “Let us begone!”

Silently, we left the Wizard of the Moder hissing and slashing his sword about. We left that golden room.

We were perfectly confident we would find the way out.

Ungovich, green and marbled with arrested decay, slobbered after us. He sobbed in the agony of his spirit. As we reached the crimson curtains of the doorway, Nodgen turned back and spoke.

“The next time we come here, old Wizard, we may not be so magnanimous!”

“Come back!” squeaked Hunch. “Come back
here
! You off your head?”

And so as we went out we laughed.

But I felt again that dark sense of dread that, one day, I
would
return... If not to this Moder then another of the many dark death traps of the Humped Land...

We found the stairway, we found the door, we opened it with an ordinary handle.

We stepped outside.

We stepped into the clean fresh air, and into the glorious streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio...

The dark and ominous bulk of the Moder brooded at our backs.

By Zim-Zair! But it was good to be alive, and on Kregen!

* * * *

The adventures of Dray Prescot continue in
A Victory for Kregen.

[1]It is not necessary to go into a full explanation of Jikaida to understand the course of this game. The rules and a description of Poron Jikaida were published as an Appendix to
A Sword for Kregen,
the second volume in the Jikaida Cycle of the Saga of Dray Prescot.
A.B.A.

[2]Quidang — equates with “Very Good, your orders will be carried out at once.” Similar to “Aye, aye, sir.”
A.B.A.

[3]Ob: one. Sko: left. Mon: right.
A.B.A.

[4]Hik: abbreviation for Hikdar, roughly equivalent to a captain, a company commander... Its use here is correct Kregish.
A.B.A.

[5]Fluttrhim: Flying man.

[6]Ord: eight.

Alan Burt Akers was a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer, who died in December 2005 aged eighty-four.

Bulmer wrote over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction, both under his real name and numerous pseudonyms, including Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Philip Kent, Bruno Krauss, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Chesman Scot, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, and Tully Zetford. Kenneth Johns was a collective pseudonym used for a collaboration with author John Newman. Some of Bulmer’s works were published along with the works of other authors under "house names" (collective pseudonyms) such as Ken Blake (for a series of tie-ins with the 1970s television programme The Professionals), Arthur Frazier, Neil Langholm, Charles R. Pike, and Andrew Quiller.

Bulmer was also active in science fiction fandom, and in the 1970s he edited nine issues of the New Writings in Science Fiction anthology series in succession to John Carnell, who originated the series.

More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at www.mushroom-ebooks.com, and at wikipedia.org.

The Dray Prescot Series

The Delian Cycle:

1. Transit to Scorpio

2. The Suns of Scorpio

3. Warrior of Scorpio

4. Swordships of Scorpio

5. Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

6. Manhounds of Antares

7. Arena of Antares

8. Fliers of Antares

9. Bladesman of Antares

10. Avenger of Antares

11. Armada of Antares

The Krozair Cycle:

12. The Tides of Kregen

13. Renegade of Kregen

14. Krozair of Kregen

Vallian cycle:

15. Secret Scorpio

16. Savage Scorpio

17. Captive Scorpio

18. Golden Scorpio

Jikaida cycle:

19. A Life for Kregen

20. A Sword for Kregen

21. A Fortune for Kregen