Haggopian and Other Stories (25 page)

And clenching the thin end of the faggot between his teeth, he once more set feet to rope rungs and began to descend. Up until which time, Tarra had not erred…

The flue swiftly widened out, like the neck of a jar, and at a count of only thirty rungs Tarra touched floor. There was the torch he had seen from above, guttering now on this cavern’s floor, but of Hadj Dyzm—

The Hrossak stood with one hand on the ladder and turned in a slow circle, holding high his torch. Over there…more statues of Cthulhu and others of his pantheon. And over here…an open box carved from solid rock, its heaped contents spilling over onto the floor. But
such
contents!

Tarra stepped as in a dream toward that fabulous hoard, and reaching it heard Dyzm’s hoarse, echoing chuckle—
from above
!

He fell into a crouch, spun on his heel, leaped back toward the ladder—in time to see it whisked up, out of sight. And more important, far out of reach. So that now Tarra knew how sorely he’d been fooled, and how surely he was trapped.

“Hrossak?” came Dyzm’s guttural query from overhead. “You, Tarra Khash—do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, trustworthy one!” Tarra almost choked on the words.

“Then hearken awhile,” the other chortled, “and I’ll tell you
all
the tale, for I’ve seen what a curious lad you are and I’m sure you’ll be enthralled.”

“By all means,” Tarra growled. “Why, you might say I’m a captive audience!” And he too laughed, but a trifle bitterly.

“In all truth,” said Dyzm, “I really did come out of Eyphra with a caravan—but of sheerest necessity, I assure you. Mayhap you’ve heard of the sulphur pits twixt Eyphra and Chill Sea?”

Tarra had: effluvium of extinct blowholes, the pits were worked by a penal colony under the watchful, cruel eyes of guards little better than criminals themselves. It was said that men aged ten years for every one spent in those hellholes, and that their skins rapidly grew withered and yellow from…the…work!

Withered and yellow, aye. Which was a fair description of the way Tarra’s brain felt right now.

He sighed, shook his head in dismay, sat down in the dust. He looked up. “You escaped, hey?”

“Not so fast, Hrossak! Oh, you’re right, I was there, indeed I was—for three long years! And all that time spent planning my escape, which is all anyone does in that place, until finally it became imperative. You see, there was a ragged bone of a man in that place with me, and before he died he spoke to me of these vaults. His directions couldn’t be simpler: come around the southern tip of the Mountains of Lohmi until you find a waterfall and pool, and so on. He had been here, you see, coming upon this place (quite genuinely) by accident. Later, weighed down with treasure, he’d fallen into the hands of mountain men. They were so awed by what he had with him that they let him live, even let him keep a bauble or two before cuffing him about a bit and pointing him in the direction of Eyphra. Aye, and weeks later he’d stumbled into that suspicious city a ragged starveling, filthy and verminous, so that when the people saw his few paltry nuggets and gems… Why! What else could he be but a thief? And so they’d taken away the last of his trove and sent him to dig in the sulphur pits, which was where I met him when they sent me there for murder. Ah!—but he’d already been there for four years, and it was something of a legend how long Death had fruitlessly stalked him. However that may be, all men must die in the end. And he was no exception…

“Now then: oft and again he’d told me the tale of these treasure vaults, but never how to get here until the very end, with the last gasp of his dying. And by then I knew he told the truth, for dying, what use would he have for lies? He knew he was finished, you see, and so had nothing to lose.

“For that matter, neither had I much to lose; which was why, at first opportunity, I ran off. No easy task, Tarra Khash, flight from the sulphur pits. I left three guards dead in my wake, and a fourth crippled, but at last I was free and running. Aye, and now I had somewhere to run.

“Bits of jewellery I’d taken from the dead guards bought me third-class passage with a caravan I met with where it entered the pass through Lohmi’s peaks, following which I spent a deal of my time with a pair of guides, converting them from their loyalty to the caravan’s master to my own cause. Ah!—but it’s a powerful lure, treasure, as you’ve discovered.”

Here Tarra gruffly interrupted: “What?
Hah!
You can have all your much-vaunted tomb-loot, Hadj Dyzm. Keep it and good luck to you. Nothing more than cursed curiosity caused me to follow you, and more fool me for that!”

Again Dyzm’s chuckle, but darker now. “Well, and doubtless you’ve heard what curiosity did for the cat?”

Tarra nodded, almost groaning in his frustration. But then he took a deep breath, clenched his fists until the muscles of his arms bulged, and said: “But I’ve also heard how cats have nine lives. Be sure, Hadj Dzym, that in one of them, this mouser will catch up with a certain rat!”

“Come now, Hrossak!” gurgled the other. “What’s this I detect in your tone? Do you dare, in your unenviable position, to threaten? It bodes not well for our future dealings, I think! Be careful what you say. Better let me finish before you drop yourself even deeper in the mire. You see, I’m not an unreasonable man, and for all your treachery, I—”

“
My
treachery!” Tarra once more cut in, unable to believe his ears.

“Certainly! Didn’t you follow me when I tended my camels in the dusk, spying on me all the way? I had thought you might discover the cave behind the falls there and then. But no, you needed more encouragement. And so I gave it to you—tonight! Aye, and haven’t you admitted following me here, as I’d known you would? Curiosity, you say? But should I believe that? Am I as great a fool as you, then?”

“Amazing!” Tarra gasped. “And I’m talking to a self-confessed murderer?”

“Several times over!” Dyzm emphatically agreed. “And they needed killing all—but in any case, that’s quite another matter, part of an entirely separate set of circumstances. Now hear me out:

“Where was I ? Ah, yes—

“—So, there I was journeying with the caravan, putting a deal of distance twixt myself and sulphur pits, and along the way recruiting for my treasure hunt. And half-way down Lohmi’s eastern flank, lo! the mountain men struck. In great numbers, too. Now, perhaps on other occasion my converted guides might have stayed and fought and died for their rightful master, but now they had a new master and he had promised them riches. Once more the old principle surfaces, Tarra Khash. Namely: a poor man will risk his all for very little gain, but a rich man’s lust for life is that much stronger. Hasn’t he more to live for? So it was with the guides: my whispers had set deepest desires in motion, creating a conflict of loyalties. The choice was this: stay and remain poor and perhaps die—or flee and live and grow fat and rich. Need I say more? I doubt it…”

“You lured the traitors here,” Tarra nodded, “leaving caravan and all to tender mercy of mountain-bred barbarians. Very well, and where are your disciples now?”

“Alas, I know not,” said Dyzm, and the Hrossak sensed his shrug. “Except that you are closer to them than I am.”

“What?” Tarra gave a start, peering all about at the flickering shadows cast by his dying torch. (Hadj’s, upon the floor, had long since expired.) “Are you saying that they’re down here?”

“Aye, somewhere. More than that I can’t say; I’ve not seen them for a bit…” And this time Dyzm’s chuckle was deep and doomful indeed.

“You mean some harm’s befallen them, and you’ve made no effort to find and save them?”

“What? Lower myself down there?” the other feigned shock at the very suggestion. “Haven’t I explained? You speak to a man who toiled three long years in the sulphur pits, remember? And you think I would willingly incarcerate myself in another of Earth’s dark holes? For be sure such would be prison to me and surely drive me mad! No, not I, Tarra Khash.”

And now the Hrossak, for all that he was a hard man, felt genuinely sickened to his stomach. “You let them starve down here!” he accused, spitting out the sour bile of his mouth into the dust.

“I did not!” Dyzm denied. “Indeed I would have fed them well. Meat and fishes aplenty—water, too, if they’d needed it. My promise was this: a meal each time they half-filled this bucket here with gold and jewels. Any more than that and the rope might break, d’you see? And given a stouter rope they’d doubtless swarm up it. Anyway, starve they did not and my promise was, after all, redundant…”

“And that was their only incentive, that so long as they worked you would feed them?” Tarra shook his head in disgust. “‘Young bucks,’ you called them. Frightened pups, it seems to me.”

“Ah, no,” answered Dyzm. “More than hunger goaded them, that has to be admitted.”

His words—the way he spoke them, low and phlegmy, almost lingeringly—set Tarra’s skin to tingling. After a while, in as steady a voice as he could muster, he said: “Well, then, say on, old fox: what other incentives goaded them? Or better still get straight to the point and tell me how they died.”

“Two things I’ll tell you—” Dyzm’s voice was light again, however throaty, “about incentives. And one other thing about my age, for this fox is in no way old. ‘Aged’ I am, aye—by dint of sulphur steam in my throat and lungs, and my skin all yellowed from its sting—but not aged, if you see the distinction. And my belly puffed and misshapen from years of hunger, and likewise my limbs gnarly from hard labour. But my true years can’t number a great many more than your own, Tarra Khash, and that’s a bitter fact.”

“I’d marked all that for myself,” said Tarra, “but—”

“—But let me speak!”
Dyzm’s turn to interrupt. And: “Incentives, you wanted. Very well. One: I would take four half-buckets of treasure—only four—and then lower the ladder and let them up, and all three of us would get our share. Two: the quicker they got to work and began filling the bucket, the better for them, for their time would likely be…limited.”

Limited? Tarra liked not the word. “By the amount of food you could provide?”

“No, game is plentiful in and around the lake, as you’ve seen. Guess again.”

“By the number of torches you could readily prepare, whose light the two would need in order to do your bidding?”

“No, the preparation of torches proved in no way inconvenient.”

Tarra frowned. “Then in what way limited?”

He heard Dyzm’s gurgly, self-satisfied sigh. “I cannot be sure,” he finally said. “It was only…something that my friend in the sulphur pits warned me about.”

“Oh?”

“Aye, for I also had it from him—in his dying breath, mind you, which was a deep one—that the ancient race of kings whose tombs and treasures these were, had set certain guardians over their sepulchres and sarcophagi, and that even now the protective spells of long-dead wizards were morbidly extant and active. Which is to say that the place is cursed, Tarra Khash, and that the longer you stay down there—in what you will shortly discover to be a veritable labyrinth of tombs—the more immediate the horror!”

IV

Horror? And the Hrossak cared for
that
word not at all! Nor on this occasion did he doubt the veracity of what Dyzm had said: it would explain why the pool and country around had not been settled. Nomads and hill men alike were wary of such places, as well they might be. Finally he found voice: “And the nature of this doom?”

“Who can say?” Dyzm replied. “Not I, for the two who went before you did not live to tell me. But they did tell me this: that in a certain tomb are twin statues of solid gold, fashioned in the likeness of winged krakens not unlike the dripstone idols of these cavern antechambers. And having loaded three half-buckets of treasure for me, they went off together to fetch me one of these statues; their last trip, as would have been. Alas, they returned not… But you need a fresh torch, Hrossak, for that one dies.” He let fall a fat faggot and Tarra quickly fired it.

“Now then,” Dyzm continued in a little while, “this is what I propose. Find for me that tomb and fetch me a kraken of gold, and that will suffice.”

“Suffice?”

“I shall then be satisfied that you are a sincere man and worthy to be my partner in future ventures. And when I have the statue, then shall I lower the ladder and we’ll be off to Chlangi together, and so on to Klühn.”

Tarra could not keep from laughing, albeit a mite hysterically. “Am I to believe this? Fool I am, Hadj Dyzm—great fool, as you’ve well proved—but
such
a fool?”

“Hmm!” Dyzm gruffly mused. He dropped more torches. “Well, think it over. I can wait awhile. How long the demon guardians will wait is a different matter. Meanwhile: ‘ware below!—I lower the bucket.” And down came the bucket on the end of its rope.

Tarra at once tugged at the rope, testing it, and as the bucket came to rest upon the floor he swung himself aloft, climbing by strength of his arms alone. Man-high he got—and not an inch higher. With soft, twangy report rope parted, and down crashed Hrossak atop bucket and all.
“Ow!”
he complained, getting upon his feet.

Above, Dyzm chuckled. “Ow, is it?” he said. “Worse than that, Tarra Khash, if the rope had held! Did you think I’d sit here and do nothing until you popped up out of the hole? I’ve a knife here you could shave with, to cut you or rope or both. Oh, I know, ’twas desperation made you try it. Well, you’ve tried and failed, so an end to tomfooleries, eh? Now I’ll lower the rope some and you can make a knot; after which you can get off and find me my kraken statue. But a warning: any more heroics and I’ll make you
fetch both!”

“Very well,” Tarra answered, breathing heavily, “—but first tell me something. Right here, a pace or two away, lies a great stone box of treasure. Doubtless your two dragged it here for you. Now tell me: why were its contents never hauled aloft?”

“Ah!” said Dyzm. “That would be their fourth haul, when they told me about the statues. I had forgotten.”

“So,” said the Hrossak, nodding, “returning with this box—their
fourth
haul and not the third, as you first alleged—these idiots told you about the golden, winged kraken idols, so that you spurned this latest haul in favour of the greater marvel they described. Is that it?”