The Tritonian Ring and Other Pasudian Tales (18 page)

             
Gripping his scabbard lest it clank, Vakar tiptoed toward the bier. He was about to mount the single step around the black block to look into Nichok's face when a noise caused him to start back.

             
Something stirred in the shadows on the far side of the bier. As Vakar watched, the thing unfolded and rose on many limbs until its stalked eyes looked across Nichok's body into those of Vakar Zhu.

             
It was an enormous crab.

             
The crab began to scuttle with horrifying speed around the bier. Before Vakar could move it was coming at him from his right. As he leaped back, sidling around
the bier in his turn to keep the obstacle between them, the crab swung round and with a sweep of a huge chela knocked the ladder down. It fell with a loud clatter. Sweating with terror, Vakar realized that this was no mere crab, but an intelligent being.

             
The crab came at Vakar again, its claws rasping on the stone floor. Vakar dodged around the bier; the crab stopped and began circling the bier in the opposite direction. Vakar perforce reversed too.

             
How in the names of all the gods, he wondered, was he to get out of this? They could go on circling the stone block until one or the other collapsed from exhaustion, and he knew which that would
be
...

             
No, they would not circle indefinitely; the crab had other ideas. Leg by leg it began climbing
over
the bier. Delicately it raised its feet so that its claws did not touch Nichok's body or the lamp, and stood swaying, balanced, its stalked eyes looking down into those of Vakar. The small forked antennae between the eye-stalks quivered and the many pairs of mandibles opened and shut, emitting a froth of bubbles.

             
The thing started to topple towards Vakar, who whirled and snatched at the ladder in the forlorn hope of getting it back in position and bolting up it. He had it partly raised when he heard the sharp sound of the crab's eight claws striking the floor behind him, and then the ladder was snatched out of his grasp. As he turned he heard the wood crunch under the grip of the great chelae that could snip off his head as easily as he could pinch off the head of a daisy.

             
The crab flung the ladder across the room and scuffled towards Vakar, chelae spread and opened. Vakar, backing towards a corner, drew and cut at the monster as it came within reach, but the sharp bronze bounced back from the hard shell without even scratching it. When
Kurtevan had spoken of the guardian demon's vulnerabi
li
ty he had not mentioned the possibility of its having this loricated form.

             
Vakar felt the wall at his back. The chelae started to close in upon him.

             
In that last instant before he was cut to bits like a paper-doll scissored by an angry child,
a picture crossed Vakar's mind. It was of himself as a boy playing on one of the royal
estates on the
coast of Lorsk along the western margins of Poseidon's, in the Bay of
Kort. He was talking to an old f
isherman who held a vainly struggling crab from behind with one horny hand and said:

             
"Eh, lad, keep your thumb on the belly of him and your fingers on the back, and he can't reach around to nip ye
…"

             
With that Vakar knew what he had to do. As the chelae closed in he threw himself forward and down.
He.
hit
the floor beneath the crab's mandibles and rolled frantically under the creature's belly, which cleared the floor by about two feet As the chelae closed on the empty air with a double snap, Vakar rose to his feet.

             
He was now behind the crab, which swivelled its eye-stalks back towards him and began to turn to face him again. Vakar leaped to the creature's broad hard-shelled back. With his free hand he seized one of the forked antennae, then pulled it back and held it like a rein, standing balanced with legs spread and knees bent on his unusual mount.

             
The crab circled, its chelae waving wildly and their great pincer-jaws snapping as it strove to reach back to grasp its foe, but the joints of its armor did not permit it that much flexibility.

             
Vakar swung his sword, with a silent prayer to the gods of Lorsk that his edge should prove true, and slashed at one of the eye-stalks; then at the other. Blue blood bubbled as the blinded crab clattered sideways across the room— and blundered into the stone bier.

             
The impact threw Vakar off its back, breaking his grip on the antenna. He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the painful knock that he had received against the bier, and dodged away from the chelae. The -crab set off in the opposite direction until it crashed into the wall. Then it crept slowly sideways, the hinder end of its shell scraping against the stone, until it reached the nearest comer. There it crouched, its chelae raised and spread defensively.

             
Moving quietly, Vakar picked up the sword he had dropped, sheathed it, and replaced the ladder. One of the rungs had been broken out of it when the crab seized
it, and one of the uprights had been cracked by the pinch of the chelae. Vakar looked at it dubiously and then went to fetch the body of Nichok. He heaved the man up over his shoulder, staggered to the ladder, and began to climb. An ominous cracking came from the weakened upright, and he could feel the thing begin to give and turn under
his
hand and feet. Wouldn't it be just fine if it broke and dumped him down again into the trance-chamber with the crab for company and no way out?

             
He heaved his way up. Just as the ladder seemed about to give completely he heard Rial's voice:

             
"Hold, my lord! I'll pull him up."

             
Fual reached down and got hold of Nichok. With much grunting and heaving they manhandled the body up through the hole. Vakar followed as quickly as he could. When he gained the surface above
he
sat down with his feet dangling into the hole.

             
"Just a minute," he said.

             
He sat having a quiet case of the shakes while Fual whispered: "Let's hurry, sir; that thing outside is still prowling around
...
When the crab came at you I was so sure you were a dead man I couldn't watch any longer; but when I looked around again you were putting up the ladder."

             
Vakar gave a last glance down into the hole. Though no sentimentalist he felt a little sorry for the crab, crouching in darkness and waiting for the succor of a master who never came.

             
A few minutes later they were outside Nichok's grounds, having issued forth by the same tunnel. They pushed down the hinged slab and held Nichok between them, one of his arms around each neck as if they were taking him home from a drunken party. As they staggered along, Vakar limping from his fall from the crab's back, they sang a lusty Lorskan drinking-song:

"With foam-bubbling beer
             
and soul
-
warming wine,

We drink to the deities
             
who brought us these boons;

Glory to the gods
             
             
and well-being to warriors ..."

-

             
Kurtevan was bent over a heap of yellowed manuscripts, shuffling them back and forth and tracing out their lines of cryptic glyphs with a long fingernail, when Vakar and Fual staggered up the stairs into his living-room with Nichok's body between them. They let the body slip to the ground, and Vakar said:

             
"Here you are."

             
Kurtevan raised his heavy
lids
a little. "Good."

             
Fual went over to Vakar's scrip and began checking its contents under the contemptuous glance of the thaumaturge. He laid out the rings of gold and the ingots of silver, the copper tor
c
s and celts, and the packets of spice in neat rows on a stool to facilitate counting. Vakar said:

             
"Well, sir magician, what is the thing the gods most fear?"

             
Kurtevan finished what he was reading, then rolled up the manuscripts and dropped them into a chest beside his taboret. He raised his head and said:

             
"The thing the gods most fear is the Ring of the Tritons."

             
"What is that?"

             
"A finger-ring of curious gray metal that is neither tin nor silver nor lead, and why the gods should fear it I cannot tell you. This ring is on the finger of the king of the Tritons, one Ximenon, whom you will find on the island of
Menê
in Lake Tritonis, in the land Tritonia, which lies south of the Thrinaxian Sea. Now you have all the information you need, pray leave me, for I have strenuous magical works to perform."

             
Vakar digested this speech with astonishment. "You mean—you do not have this thing here?"

             
"Of course not.
Now go."

             
"I will be eternally cursed—of all the barefaced swindles—"

             
"That is enough, young man. I do not tolerate insolence, and I have not swindled you. If you remember our conversation, I did not make you any definite promise in
return for your help in the matter of Nichok. You said you were seek
in
g the object; very well, I have done what I could to help you by telling you where and what it is."

             
The fact that the wizard's statement was literally true did nothing to check Vakar's rising anger. He felt the blood rushing to
his
face as he shouted:

             
"Oh, is that so? You asked me how much I would pay for the thing itself, and if you—"

             
"Silence!
Get out!"

             
"After I have taken my payment out of your hide—"

             
Vakar reached for his sword and took a stride towards Kurtevan. The wizard merely opened his eyes all the way and stared into those of Vakar.

             
"You," said the thaumaturge in a low voice, "are unable to move. You are rooted to the spot
...
"

             
To his horror, Vakar found that as he advanced he met more and more resistance, as if he were wading in cold honey. By exerting all his strength he just barely made
his
next step and got his sword a few inches out of the scabbard. His eyes bulged and his muscles quivered with the strain. He was vaguely aware of Fual, crouched over their trade-goods, gaping with an idiotic stare as if he, too,
were
ensorcelled. Meanwhile the wizard also seemed to strain.

             
"You are no spiritual weakling," grunted Kurtevan, "but you shall see that your will in no way compares with mine. Stand still while I make preparations for your disposal."

             
Kurtevan reached behind him and threw a powder into the brazier on the little tripod, which thereupon smoldered and smoked heavily. He picked a staff from the floor beside him and drew lines on the floor with it. Then he began an incantation in an arcane tongue.

             
Vakar strained like a dog on a leash. Sweat ran down his forehead as with a mighty effort he dragged his right foot a further inch along the floor and pulled his sword a finger's breadth more from the scabbard. Beyond that he could not go; he could not even turn his head or force his tongue to speak.