Sorcery in Shad Read online

  He glimpsed, too, the shrivelled-seeming slaver who leaned a little from his tent’s door to beckon to a pair of his faithful, fearful black retainers; and how though they shivered as from some burning fever of the soul, still they could not refuse but went in unto him. Ah, and how the great winds steadied themselves and blew true on the ships of Shad from that time onward! And Teh Atht knew he was seeing magick at work here as mighty as any he could produce, and blacker than any he’d ever dare to conjure.

  It was, could only be, Black Yoppaloth working through the medium of his slaver-in-chief, hastening his vessels home to him; and for what foul purpose? Had he already seen Gemal’s new sword, Teh Atht wondered? Had he recognized it as a Sword of Power? For of course Yoppaloth was capable of scrying on these distant events, even as Teh Atht himself. What? He was capable of raising a storm in those foreign waters, to blow his ships home! And with these slaves and innocent girls, used in some unhallowed rite, and with that sword…would there be any limit to the undying monster’s power then?

  Suddenly Teh Atht knew what he must do.

  He did not relish it, but he had felt the bitter winds of the outer immensities blowing on his soul, had seen his heart – perhaps the heart of Theem’hdra itself – gripped in a mighty black fist and crushed until it dripped blood. Only a vision, one of many possible futures, true, but one which could not be suffered to become reality.

  A shipwreck might be the answer: send Cush Gemal and his recently won scimitar to the bottom of the Eastern Ocean! And Tarra Khash? And those strong young slaves? And all twelve of those lovely, innocent lasses? But what would their fate be, anyway, in dark and jungled Shad? Better far the salty kiss of ocean than the mouldering lips of liches, and weedy rather than weird graves. And Orbiquita, when she discovered how her Tarra had drowned? All hell to pay there, but it would pass. Aye, and feelings of guilt would pass, too, balanced against the continuing certainty and comparative serenity of Theem’hdra’s future.

  So be it, a wreck!

  There were islands about, and more ahead: tiny, weathered crests of rock upthrusting from ocean floor, last vestiges of land-bridges which once joined Shadarabar to the mainland. Unmarked on any map, these islands, reefs and sandbars were a menace best avoided. To that end the magick winds blew Cush Gemal’s five boats well to the east of the first group of islands, so that only their rocky spires were glimpsed through the spray, and the breakers crashing on their reefs. Aye, one such group safely navigated, but more coming up fast ahead.

  And now Teh Atht considered a magick of his own making. For having had some little time to think about it, he believed he could emulate Black Yoppaloth’s seemingly gigantic effort, however reduced in scale. Indeed it should be a fairly simple thing, though for a fact it would leave Teh Atht very much open to discovery. Still and all, however great the risk, it was more than balanced by the dire threat poised even now over the entire Primal Land.

  Sympathetic magick was the answer. Primitive witchcraft. But coupled with the complexities of Teh Atht’s more esoteric thaumaturgies, it should work! Quickly he stood up, strode to the weirdly mobile globe of alien plasma which was his astrologarium, rapidly calculated the co-ordinates of Cush Gemal’s planet. It was, he saw, that same sphere (subject of many a previous calculation) which influenced Black Yoppaloth’s affairs: a small dark moon on the rim, which even now swam into view around the bulk of a vast and cratered parent world. So Yoppaloth and his strangeling slavemaster shared similar origins and destinies, did they? All to the good: let both be blind a while!

  Now the white wizard took from his pocket a black silk handkerchief, the while calling to his third familiar that he show himself. Out from the very plasma the liquid one appeared, spurting like a squid in miniature star-spaces. Teh Atht held out his square of silk, saying: ‘Take it, quickly now, and drape it over yonder moonlet.’

  In a moment the thing was done, and now the moon reeled blindly in a darkness other than that of its parent’s shadow. ‘There!’ said Teh Atht, satisfied. ‘And now perhaps they’ll not sense me while I work against them.’ Then, uttering a brief malediction against the moon and all in its sway, he returned to his shewstone. It were time now to make a test.

  Taking a bowl of water in which he’d recently freshened his face, the wizard stirred its contents to motion and set it down beside the shewstone. He took up an old quill and broke it into five small pieces, dropping them into the bowl. Five ships of Shad, all bobbing on the water in line abreast. Then, half-shuttering his eyes, Teh Atht began to breathe slow and deeply, and was soon in self-induced trance.

  His eyes narrowed to slits, filmed over as if varnished, while his breathing became so slow as to almost falter. And as the scene in the shewstone expanded in the eye of his mind, until he could almost fancy himself there aboard Cush Gemal’s boat, so he commenced to blow gently on the five quill ships. Now, with skilful puffs, he separated Gemal’s vessel from the others, and concentrating on that one alone drove it sideways toward the rim of the bowl – except that to Teh Atht the bowl was now grown to an ocean, and its rim a treacherous sandbar jutting out from craggy islet …

  Tarra Khash saw the other four ships forging away, felt a strange sideways current drawing Cush Gemal’s vessel westward. Ahead a tiny island, where a long low line of waves showed breaking over a reef or sandbar. The Hrossak made rapid calculations, saw that at this rate of veer the ship would soon run aground!

  He clambered round the bulk of Old Scaly where he crouched amidships and honked his distress, made his way back to the Yhemni steersman at the long-handled tiller.

  ‘Man, your rudder’s broken!’ he bellowed. ‘We’re heading straight for that hazard!’

  ‘Not broken,’ the black yelled back, fighting with the tiller. ‘Something bad wrong!’

  ‘Bad wrong?’ Tarra lent his own strength to the unequal struggle. ‘You’re damned right there is!’ He looked ahead through wind and spray, saw that in another minute they’d hit. The slaves had seen the danger, too, and were tearing at the chains that bound them to useless oars. Tarra turned back to the steersman. ‘Who has the key to those chains?’ he demanded.

  ‘I have them, in belt,’ the frizzy shouted back, scowled at Tarra and narrowed his dark eyes. ‘And I keep!’

  ‘We have to release them,’ the Hrossak allowed himself to stumble against the man. ‘Else when the boat hits, they’re goners!’

  ‘No do,’ the black shook his head. ‘Only if master say so …’

  ‘Can’t wait for that,’ Tarra yelled. He grabbed the other’s belt, tore loose the large iron key which he found there, tossed it to one of the slaves where the end of the chain was padlocked to his oar. Even as he did so the boat gave a lurch; the steersman had released the tiller to snatch out a knife. A second black, knife drawn, likewise came scrambling, converging on Tarra, and others cracked whips with less than their accustomed accuracy in a vain attempt to quell the panic of the slaves.

  Now terror held full sway: chains were rattling through their staples; blacks stumbled here and there, at a loss what to do next; in the front of the boat, close behind Gemal’s tent, screams rang out from the helpless knot of girls as their doom roared ever closer. And suddenly—

  ‘Blind! Blind!’ A mad cry rose above wind and water and all the rest. ‘Who has done this? What curse is on me now?’ Cush Gemal was there in the prow of the boat, just now emerged from his tent, one hand clapped to his eyes and the other outstretched and groping wildly in the air. He reeled to the shuddering of the sideways drifting vessel, swayed to and fro to the tune of its lurching.

  Tarra Khash had his own problems. As the former steersman made a wild stab at his throat, he ducked sideways and felt the keen edge of the man’s knife slice the lobe of his ear. Then he’d kicked his attacker in the groin and knuckled him under the nose, caving in his upper lip. The second black came from the rear, of which Tarra wasn’t aware until he heard his gurgling scream. He turned, saw the frizzy go down, one hand bent b
ehind him where he vainly strove to grasp the knife in his spine.

  Tarra would know that knife anywhere: he’d once buried it in the sand beside the body of a previous owner. And there on a starboard bench, no longer chained – one arm clinging to a shipped oar for balance and the other outstretched in a life-saving, death-dealing throw – who else but Loomar Nindiss!

  And then the boat hit!

  ‘Hit’ (if the word conveys a shattering and flying apart) is probably the wrong word. ‘Reared upon’ might be better; for indeed the flat bottomed boat reared upon the sandbar. Driven at a furious pace, it slid home on the wide reach of submerged sand and pebbles, reared on its prow like a bucking pony, teetered there for a moment before falling back with a colossal slap in the water. But in that moment of slithering collision and slingshot rearing—

  Cush Gemal, girls, slaves, slavers and all were hurled high in an arc of thrashing bodies, came down in a frenzy of flailing limbs into the sea beyond the sandbar – which was a great deal calmer and not nearly so deep as the thundering ocean proper. Indeed the sandbar had formed something of a lagoon or harbour, where now ejected crew and captives floundered in water only chest-deep.

  As for Old Scaly: his great weight had saved the day, stopped the boat from capsizing into the lagoon. But at the moment of the collision he’d commenced sliding forward, levelled Gemal’s now ragged tent, crashed through the shallow rail of the prow and plunged headlong into the sea close to the milling swimmers. Tarra Khash was miraculously fortunate: in the very rear of the boat, his trajectory had been higher, tossing him up into the sail. There he’d been cushioned in the slackening bell of canvas; had slid down the sail ‘til his feet met the boom; finally, dizzily, had lowered himself to the deck.

  Behind the Hrossak, roaring water and foaming spray; here beneath his unsteady feet the boat, now empty, firmly lodged in sucking sand; ahead the shallow, calm and lagoon-like waters, and jumbled rockpile of an island close at hand. Tarra’s head stopped spinning and he looked at the swimmers where they were striving for the shore. He found his voice to yell: ‘The lizard! Cling to Old Scaly!’ For the giant lizards of Hrossa were blundering good swimmers and buoyant as corks.

  Then the steppeman’s eyes searched out Cush Gemal – and found him lying prone on the bottom! Overboard went Tarra Khash in a shallow dive, which took him down to where Cush Gemal lay stiff as stone on a swirly bed of sand and gravel. Stiff as stone? – he was stone! – but pumice, not granite. And pumice floats!

  As Tarra tugged, so the slaver boss came free and drifted to the surface; and the Hrossak, utterly astonished and feeling himself dreaming, propelling him ashore faceup, like some old figurehead carved of leaden driftwood.

  Then gravel sucking soggily underfoot, and hands reaching to haul the steppeman up out of clinging water, and blacks gawping at their grey-carved master bobbing on his back in the shallows. But in the next moment Cush Gemal came back to life and his black eyes were flecked with a red fury.

  He sprang up in the water, stepped to dry land. His bloodshot eyes scanned the sky and fixed on something no one else saw. He pointed, shouted:

  ‘You – you dog – you!’ And then, in an agony of frustration: ‘Ah! – too late! But next time, my veiled friend! Never fear, for next time I’ll know you! Aye, and then we’ll discover what magick may do, eh?’ With that, green fire leaped unannounced from his pointing fingertips, hurled itself harmlessly into the sky and burst in an incendiary flash of emerald flares. Following which Cush Gemal seemed to shrivel down into himself, and without another word collapsed into the arms of Tarra Khash …

  Out the corner of one half-shuttered eye, Teh Atht had seen a black silk square slide from a miniature moon and flutter into the path of a flaring star. Bursting into flame, the silken kerchief’s yellow flash of fire had distracted him, and his long-distance spell of Curious Concretion was broken. Panic gripped him and he at once strove to come fully awake, out of his trance.

  He succeeded only just in time; a moment longer and Cush Gemal would have penetrated the veil and found him out. And leaping from his seat and away from the shewstone, he only just managed to avoid a severe singeing as the surface of that sphere sent gobbets of green fire racing round the room of the astrologarium like tiny comets.

  In that same instant, too, it had dawned on Teh Atht just who he was dealing with here. Cush Gemal? Ah, so he termed himself; but in fact this could only be one man. Little wonder he shared the same star as Black Yoppaloth; indeed, he was Black Yoppaloth! And Klühn’s master mage shuddered as he realized how close he’d come to revealing himself to that immortal monster …

  Tarra sat in morbid mood on the scaly flank of his dead honker and watched the work in progress. As the magickal storm had blown itself out, so the other four ships had returned and two of them had disgorged their slaves, who now worked to free Cush Gemal’s stranded vessel from the quaggy grip of the sandbar. Labouring in six inches to a foot of choppy water, they dug away at the sand under the boat’s flat bottom and slowly inched the craft off the bar into shallow water. Since the sandbar was not a true reef, the harbour it formed was not completely enclosed; open-ended, a ship might easily sail away from the rocky islet – that is if it could sail at all.

  Amazingly, apart from the damage to the prow’s rail and upper strakes where Old Scaly had crashed through them, Gemal’s ship had suffered no real wreckage. Some of the starboard strakes were sprung, but the ship was so constructed that these could be tightened back into position by using a tourniquet system of knotted ropes. The flat bottom, of ironwood, was cracked in places but not split open, and already a lone frizzy was on board, caulking the cracks with a raw jungle resin which hardened to glass on contact with water.

  The vessel would soon be seaworthy again, and apart from the loss of a couple of crewmen (whose bodies, mercifully, had not been washed up) little real harm had been done. Tarra’s part in freeing the slaves had apparently gone unobserved, or those who’d observed it (said disappeared crewmen) were no longer around to make accusations. The only real loss by Hrossak’s lights was that of his lizard. Tarra’s honker had collapsed on lumbering ashore, and in a little while died, probably from an overdose of stress. Their great hearts could stand any amount of work, but they weren’t much for suffering sudden or successive shocks. Or there again, perhaps something had got broken inside when the massive beast crashed through the boat’s prow.

  As for Cush Gemal: for a little while his life had been in real jeopardy – from the slaves if not from anything else. On this ocean-girt rock they far outnumbered their former masters, and none of them with an ounce of feeling (other than hatred) for the man who’d taken them into captivity. As the wind had abated more yet and it dawned on the young slaves that however cold and wet, at least they were alive and unfettered, so they’d begun to mutter darkly about Cush Gemal and his few remaining retainers. With only a handful of frizzies left to guard this lot, things might have got ugly right there and then – but that was when Tarra had spotted the four unscathed ships tacking with the wind as they returned to the isle of the wreck. Aye, and he’d spotted more than just that.

  Across and above the island’s central ridge of rock, whereto when last seen Gemal’s limp form was being carried by a pair of his numbers-depleted blacks, now the sky was dark with a wheel of revolving spray and boiling cloud; and down from this aerial cauldron dangled the narrowing funnel of a twister, whose whorl held corkscrew streamers of green fire that gave the jutting ridge of rocks a weird coruscation and forbade intrusion.

  ‘It’s my guess,’ Tarra had told the gawping slaves and the small knot of shivering girls, ‘that when next you see Cush Gemal he’ll no longer be vulnerable. And see those ships there? If you did somehow manage to kill him, what then? His lads would come ashore and slaughter you, violate the girls, finally sail off home to Shad no worse for wear. Or…they’d simply leave us marooned here, to die in our own good time. Wherefore I say: leave well enough alone. For now, anyway.
’ And that had been that.

  And sure enough, the swaying, nodding but apparently tethered tornado of green fire eventually collapsed in upon itself; and as the boats landed on the shore some little time later, so Gemal came striding like a spider across the ridge and commenced shouting orders in his accustomed fashion. But no sign of the pair of frizzies who’d crossed that ridge with him. At which Tarra Khash had narrowed his eyes and nodded, and said to himself: Well, Cush Gemal, and now I believe I know you for sure. For the Hrossak was no more a fool than was a certain white wizard of Klühn.

  And anyone standing close to the steppeman might have seen him nod again, or even heard him mutter: ‘Oh, indeed I do! As I believe I’ve known you, in my way, right from the start …’

  IX

  POWERS OF LIGHT, POWERS OF DARKNESS!

  Iniquiss and Hissiliss, most senior members of the lamia Council of Five, had returned at long last to the Sisterhood’s inner sanctum. There upon her lava island crouched the lamia Orbiquita, impatiently awaiting her release from all vows, when finally she might go forth into the world as a woman. Born half-lamia, half-girl child, her form had been human; a foundling, she’d been adopted by wandering nomads, following which the monster in her had rapidly taken ascendency; until, expelled by her foster-parents, the Sisterhood had taken her in. This was usually the way of it. But the human woman in her had never been totally eradicated, so that she’d always felt herself waiting like some dull star for a glorious nova to release her long-suppressed beauty. Tarra Khash had been the catalyst, and soon the transformation would be complete.

  Of the fact that she was beautiful in her female form, Orbiquita had little doubt; she’d often enough reverted to that delicious shape in the past, using it to seduce the foolish men (of course) who formed the Sisterhood’s principle source of food. Oh, they could eat other meat readily enough, but the flesh of men had a strength and a flavour to it away and beyond that of simple beasts; a taste which from now on she’d necessarily relinquish – as must she relinquish all thoughts such as these! But old habits die hard, and Orbiquita could not help but feel a little afraid of her new and incredibly fragile life in the harsh dawn world which awaited her. Not that she intended that her lamia sisters should see that fear; be sure that she did not.