Mad Moon of Dreams Page 15

  Then, climbing the spiral of clouds, the quester saw the enemy’s squat black ships; saw them drawn steadily around the whorl and away across the heavens toward the moon … and never a breath of air to fill a single sail!

  Soon the entire enemy fleet was airborne and adrift on the great aerial whirlpool, climbing ever higher, ever moonward. And all across that demon-painted sky the meteorites blazed and hissed, and the effect of this spectacular sight upon the four humans (for by now all were watching) was near-hypnotic. Until, as if to break the spell, there came a vast grating and shuddering, and in the center of the temple Oorn’s mighty, softly shining operculum appeared like the pearly eye of some creature of the deep.

  “Here she c—” Eldin commenced a growled warning, only to choke on the last word as the great lid cracked open to expel the foulest stench any dreamer ever dreamed. Zura and all her zombies together in the fathomless sewers of Baharna could not have equalled such a stench; but mercifully it lasted no more than a second or two before the worst of it hissed visibly upward and dissipated into the chill night air. And after the release of these pent-up gases, this condensed essence of Oorn—

  Then came Oorn Herself!

  … But slowly, cautiously (perhaps savoring the moment?), else the questers and their women were certainly driven mad in the merest moment. And if ever they had seen all of Oorn—

  First there were the eyes.

  Beneath the part-raised, yard-thick hatch—eyes! A dozen, circular, burning and unblinking, big as plates, staring out in all directions from a dark, as yet only half-seen, half-suspected bulk. Then—tentacles! Tentacles like nests of fat pink worms … Or were they merely cilia?

  Cilia, yes—tiny feet to carry the larger, heavier, true tentacles wherever Oorn directed them—like the myriad feet of starfish. And out from the pit, out from beneath the luminous eyes, out from the darkness under the vast and pearly slab those true tentacles now uncoiled, pink and translucent but pulsing with a green fluid that made mobile veins on their slick, viscous surfaces. Thicker than a man’s body, one, two, three—ten of them in all. Like the suckered arms of some sentient squid, but huge beyond belief!

  They coiled, those arms, winding about the great slab where it now tilted more steeply, and as they wound so they spread outward from the pit toward the questers and the girls where they now lay backed up against the temple’s wall.

  “Gods!” Hero gasped. “But this is no way to go.” And the girls, brave lasses though they had proved to be, now began to sob and shiver in the shadow of the wall as the tips of the tentacles, swaying like the heads of blind snakes, moved ever closer.

  A loathsome slobbering sound commenced, and a hissing and gasping as blood-red siphons appeared from the shaft to sway and writhe and suck convulsively at the still, dank air. And the tips of the hovering tentacles opened like mouths as they began to descend upon the terrified forms of Oorn’s living sacrifice.

  “Lad,” called Eldin gruffly but with no trace of the old bluster, “I don’t think I can stand much more of this. Forgive the prattle, David,” (rare day when the Wanderer used Hero’s first name!) “but if I don’t talk I’m sure I’ll start to scream.”

  “Talk away, old son,” Hero croaked in return. “As for me—I’m already screaming! Inside!” And as if encouraged by his words, an open tentacle-tip descended upon his thigh.

  Hero did scream then—but more in agony than in horror, and more an outraged cry than a scream proper. Green juices flowed from the open mouth of the pseudo-pod and dissolved away a patch of his tough leather trousers in a second—dissolved, too, the skin of the thigh beneath. And now that mouth became a sucker, slurping back the solution which the green juice had become. Seeing and feeling this, Hero cried out again—this time in true horror—for now he knew how Oorn fed!

  For the merest fraction of a second then, time seemed to stand still—a moment’s pause in the rhythm of the dreamtime universe—before the green juices flowed more copiously in the veins of the tentacles and their snake-head tips descended with more purpose …

  Somewhere, at some indeterminate distance in the night, a mighty explosion sounded as a dull rumble, and a second later the earth gave itself a small shake—and Oorn froze! The monster … listened! Yes, she listened, her every molecule tuned … to what? Then, a rapid retraction, a frenzied scurrying of a million tiny limbs and a slithering of tentacles withdrawn—and the vast bulk of Oorn, still mainly and mercifully unseen, drew back down into her centuried pit. In another moment the siphons were withdrawn, the eyes lowered themselves into darkness, the lid sighed shut with one last great exhalation of poisonous gases, and the monster was gone. There came again that grating and shivering as the massive operculum began to descend the shaft.

  “What the hell—?” Eldin croaked, and the others began to breathe again as his voice broke the stillness.

  “Something frightened her—it—off!” Hero tried to say, but only succeeded at the third attempt and after many a gulp.

  “The explosion,” came Ula’s shivery voice.

  “The shaking of the earth,” said Una.

  “Did she harm any of you?” Hero asked, strength fast returning. “No? She—tasted me!” He shuddered. “Just a taste, but I’ll never forget it. Damn her loathsome eyes!”

  “You know, lad,” rumbled Eldin, his voice ringing in a barely controlled hysteria, “sometimes I’ve envied you this fatal fascination you seem to have for certain females. But there are other times when I’m not so—”

  “Shh!” cried Ula and Una together. “Listen!”

  From somewhere to the south there came a foaming, rushing sound that rapidly built to a roar whose tremor could be felt as a vibration in the earth itself. “What now?” growled Eldin—and gave a massive start as night-black shapes fell from the sky and gray paws grabbed him where he lay.

  The others were similarly snatched up—not without shrieks of renewed terror from the girls, despite Gytherik’s young voice crying out that it was only him and his gaunts—and all four were borne aloft in the last moment before the released fury of the sea smashed through Oorn’s temple and raced in a deep tidal surge through the now deserted streets of Sarkomand.

  Above that curling, hissing wall of water, which inundated all in its path, the questers felt spray on their faces and a gaunt-wing wind that dried cold sweat on their bodies and left them shivering uncontrollably. Perhaps Ula and Una had fainted (better for them if they had, thought Hero) for they were now silent; but Eldin had already begun to roar his delight in a manner well remembered of old. And as for Hero himself—though later he would not admit it—he was baying like some great crazed hound, laughing until the tears flowed down his face and dripped into space …

  In a very little while Gytherik eased his grim down onto Gnorri’s deck and the swooning girls were carried away to be cossetted and comforted. Hero and Eldin were their own men again and more than sober. They had good reason to be, for during the gaunt-flight many things had changed. The sea lay flat once more and relatively calm, except for a certain bubbling and frothing and choppiness of the waters where they lay deep in the one-time Vale of Sarkomand. The meteorite shower had petered out and the expectant thrumming of the ether had been replaced by a clammy stillness, as if the very elements were shocked. And most important of all, it seemed that Mnomquah’s devastating leap to earth had been averted or at least postponed.

  Other things, however, had not changed; and one thing was very new and very frightening. Though there was still a complete absence of wind, Gnorri II and the other six ships of the flotilla were now in motion. They had been drawn by some nameless magnetism into the great whorl of clouds and were beginning to spiral up into the sky and along the moonbeam path toward the moon.

  —That mad, mocking moon whose “face” was now a threatening mask of depraved hatred and anger beyond the mundane minds of men to comprehend!

  PART 3

  Moon Madness

  CHAPTER I

  Tunn
el in the Moon

  “Can we still use the gaunts,” asked Limnar Dass of Gytherik, “to carry messages to the other ships?” (For some reason the dreamlands had never adopted semaphore.) “I mean, will they be capable of inter-vessel flight way out here between moon and dreamlands?”

  “I really don’t know,” the gaunt-master answered, frowning. “This is a new situation for me—for my gaunts too, I’m sure.” Down on the main deck the grim pressed close together in a sullen huddle and shuffled uncomfortably in the streaming, maddening moonlight. Gnorri’s sails provided a good deal of shade from that glare, but still its awfulness could be felt as an almost tangible thing.

  “Of course I could always ask the gaunts,” Gytherik continued, turning toward the grim and leaning across the bridge’s rail. Before he could inquire, however, Biffer (it could only be him!) thrust out his neck, fanned his membranous wings and soared aloft—just as if he had heard the sky-Captain’s question and his young master’s answer, and thought that this display should settle the matter to everyone’s satisfaction. He disappeared overboard to port, passed beneath the ship and came up to hover for a moment before perching on the starboard rail.

  “Well,” said Limnar, nodding his acknowledgment at Biffer, “that seems to be the answer to that one!”

  Of course, in the normal way of things his question would have been redundant, for gaunts are superb fliers who have no aerial peers in all the dreamlands; but the flotilla was no longer in the dreamlands, and no one seemed able to say for sure which laws might or might not apply out here. Several so-called “natural” laws, or laws which the questers had always considered natural, had already been shattered beyond repair. For one, there was the matter of the temperature.

  It was cold, most certainly—extremely cold—but not nearly what they had expected. They needed the heavy garments in which one and all were now draped, to be sure, but all were in agreement that it was only slightly colder than a bad northern winter. Hero in fact was astonished by what he leniently termed “an amazingly mild, not at all uncomfortable atmosphere.”

  Of course he had experienced the dreadful cold of dreamland’s upper atmospheric reaches (and naked at that), which not only made him something of an expert but also accounted for his present astonishment. If it could be so bitterly cold just a few miles above the dreamlands, how come it was not utterly freezing way up here? Eldin suspected that they were moving through a sort of Gulf Stream of warm air which existed permanently in the previously supposed “void” between the atmosphere of dreamland and that of the moon.

  These and many other matters had occupied the questers in the relatively short span of time since the commencement of their involuntary journey, but once the halfway point had been passed their talk had turned again to more pressing questions: chiefly Mnomquah’s purpose (for it was plainly his doing) in drawing the flotilla up to the moon, and what would be waiting for them when they got there.

  And yet even that simple statement “up to the moon” was invalid here; for they no longer spiralled up but down—down toward the surface of an utterly inhospitable world. Not at all the airless inhospitality of the waking world’s moon, no—rather that of the vile and inhuman race of moonbeasts, whose habits and appetites did not, according to legend, bear mentioning.

  As for the trip itself: it had been as strange a voyage as any of the questers had ever undertaken, and they had made several fantastical journeys in their time. Not the least of its strangeness lay in the speed with which it had been accomplished; for while on leaving the dreamlands the spiral flight had seemed slow and strangely languid, since then they had attained a monstrous velocity. Something of this had been seen in the speed with which the dreamlands had dwindled in their wake, and in the rapid bloating of the moon from a sky-filling bulk to an intricately etched world of golden plains, yawning, secretive craters, dark, oily oceans and black shadows. And yet there had been no sense of acceleration, no slightest billowing of slack-hanging sails, no agitation of air as one might expect to be occasioned by their passing. Unless their journey was totally magical in nature (which Limnar Dass frankly believed must be the case), then Eldin’s Gulf Stream of air must be travelling apace with them.

  Quite apart from discussion and conjecture, the trip had not been without occurrence. On the contrary, Mnomquah’s outrage at being denied—however temporarily—access to the dreamlands and oneness with Oorn had made itself very plain in the way he three times aimed (indiscriminately?) his solid-seeming tractor-beam across the now narrowed distance to strike at certain defenseless cities. This had been during the earlier part of the trip when the dreamlands were less obscured with clouds and their contours still visible and more or less identifiable.

  And when Gnorri’s Master got round to studying his maps and charts he had found a very strange thing … three of them, in fact. The moon-God’s rage must be violent indeed that he should so drastically and consistently mistake his targets! Or had he mistaken them? The horned-one fleet up ahead, which of course included Shantak, Chrysalis and Shroud, must also have witnessed the triple striking of the beam, and the questers could not help but wonder what Zura, Lathi and the Dukes now thought of their splendid alliance with the moonbeasts and their horned-one minions. For Mnomquah’s targets had been none other than the Charnel Gardens, twice-builded Thalarion, and the degenerate and decaying township of Isharra! How now for promises and fair play?

  “Is it because they fouled up?” Limnar Dass, at the time, wondered aloud. “Or simply because they’re of no further use to him?”

  “A little of both,” Hero had suspected. “Of course, they were easy targets. What with all the movement of moongold this lot have been engaged in, there were bound to be stockpiles of the stuff in their various headquarters.”

  Eldin for his part had gone a little deeper into the subject. “With the moon so close to the dreamlands now,” he reasoned, “you’d hardly think old Mnomquah would need his golden zeroing-in device anymore …” And he had frowned thoughtfully. “How come he doesn’t use his beam more often?”

  “I believe,” Hero had answered, “that he’s been trying to, well, fuel himself. Do you know what I mean? You remember what Hrill told us? That the peoples of the dreamlands would be fodder for Mnomquah and the moonbeasts? I really think he meant ‘fodder’ quite literally, and that Mnomquah has been, you know—”

  “Yes, lad,” Eldin had stopped him short. “We all know what you mean. But if he’s so damned hungry, why doesn’t he just go right ahead and gorge?”

  “He is hungry, I’m sure of it,” answered Hero. “See, his beams consume energy, magical or otherwise makes no difference, and he needs to make it up as fast as he uses it. Which shouldn’t be a problem, really. Except—” and he paused to snap his fingers.

  “Well?” they had all wanted to know.

  “You remember what Randolph Carter told us in his letter? About Theem’hdra in the primal waking world, the land at the dawn of time? They had two moon-gods in those days, Mnomquah and Gleeth. Now Gleeth, if you recall, was an elemental god, not really there at all—and he was blind! What I’m saying is: perhaps the old legends got it all mixed up. Perhaps Gleeth, who never was, got credited with certain characteristics—one at least—of Mnomquah, who was and still is! Do I make myself plain?”

  “As mud!” Eldin had grumbled.

  “You’re saying that Mnomquah is—” began Limnar Dass.

  “Blind?” Gytherik Imniss finished it.

  Hero nodded. “I’m beginning to think so. That’s why he daren’t expend energy on tractor-beams which stand only one chance in, say, ten thousand of hitting anything worth eating. He took the cities of his allies because they had been made easy targets. Also because Zura, Lathi and the Isharrans are of no further use to him. Also, I suspect, because we’d put him in a bit of a tantrum—but mainly because he was hungry.”

  “And now that he’s fed he’ll be fully fueled for his plunge to Oorn’s pit, eh?” questioned Limnar. The o
thers looked startled, suddenly reminded of a nightmare they had all hoped was over and done with. “After all,” Limnar continued, half apologetically, “the moon does govern the tides, you know. What comes must go—including the waters which at present cover Sarkomand.”

  “Personally,” said Hero after a moment’s silence, “I don’t think Mnomquah will have derived much benefit from Thalarion and Isharra. And as for Zura’s Charnel Gardens—why, he’s probably throwing that lot up right now! No, I rather fancy that we ourselves are intended to provide the energy for his big jump. If we let him get away with it, that is.”

  “Well, we’re certainly not going down without a fight!” Eldin had rumbled then.

  “—In which we’ll be outnumbered three or four to one,” Gytherik had pointed out. “Also, the enemy fleet will be battle-ready, just waiting for us to come spiralling down out of the sky. Why, we’ll be sitting ducks!”

  Which had taken them to the point where Limnar Dass inquired about the airworthiness of the gaunts in these interplanetary regions. And as soon as Biffer confirmed that indeed gaunts were capable of flight in the Gulf Stream ether, then the sky-Captain explained the reason for his anxious interest.

  “Gytherik is right,” he said, “we’ll be sitting ducks. And,” he reminded, “we have no powder. Nor has Starspur. We used it to crack Sarkomand’s old sea-wall. Without powder we can’t fight, so—” he turned to Gytherik, “your gaunts are going to have their paws full for the next couple of hours. They’ll have to resupply Gnorri and Starspur from the other ships. Fortunately this crazy whorl has kept us all fairly close together, so the gaunts shouldn’t really need to exhaust themselves.”

  By the time the grim fully understood their task and had been given letters marked for the flotilla’s Captains, a gradual deceleration was already making itself felt. This showed itself not as any return of weight (which had never departed and so could not return) or change of motion (which had also seemed to remain constant, despite the enormous speed they must have attained), but in the gradual recognition of a sense of spiritual weight and direction; as if the souls of all concerned had passed through an area of freefall, and that now, as they approached journey’s end, some mechanism of the psyche was alerting them to that fact.