Mad Moon of Dreams Read online

  “As you know,” (he said) “I used the egg of a Shantak-bird to break the spell which kept my father, Mathur Imniss, in the underworld cave where Thinistor Udd had prisoned him. Then I flew him home, back to Nir, where my mother was waiting. Of course, their reunion was wonderful and the first month was sheer bliss for all of us. I had not realized how much our adventures had wearied me, and now I could simply relax and take things easy. But—

  “I had to look after my gaunts. Now, you’d think night-gaunts would be simple creatures to tend, wouldn’t you?” He shook his head. “Not so. They don’t like too much daylight—not any, in fact, though they’ll work in sunlight for me—and Nir is a particularly bright spot. They prefer to sleep in caves, of which Nir is particularly lacking; and worst of all they like to fly by moonlight (normal moonlight, that is) and the people of Nir didn’t much care for that. Gaunts have a very bad rep, as you probably know …

  “So what with cooping them up in a stable, and them frightening the yaks—and their moonlight excursions frightening the townspeople—and the Town Elders forbidding me to ride with them (which they said was unhealthy and unnatural and a bad example for the village children …) well—”

  “Pretty miserable, eh?” Limnar commiserated.

  Gytherik nodded. “Just so. Miserable for me and worse for my gaunts. Listen, I want to tell you something. Would you believe, I actually think I like my gaunts?”

  Hero frowned. “Oh, I wouldn’t go so far—but I can’t deny they’ve been damn useful creatures in their way.”

  Again Gytherik nodded. “Anyway, it got so bad for them they really began to suffer. They grew even thinner; their bodies lost all their horrid feel and became almost dry and bearable; it was awful! I had the gauntest gaunts in all the dreamlands, I’m sure. And when word got out that a gaunt-master dwelled with his grim in Nir … why, people flocked to see us! We were like freaks, my gaunts and I.”

  “Pretty grim,” Eldin said, with never a trace of humour.

  “I don’t think I could have taken much more of it,” Gytherik went on. “I planned to return to the mountains, perhaps to Thinistor’s complex of caves. I could study magic there, become a sorcerer—a white one, of course—and generally make something of myself. It seemed to me suddenly that something was missing from my life, and finally it dawned on me what it was.”

  “Adventure!” said Hero with conviction. “Eldin and I are just the same when things are too quiet for too long. You’ve got the bug, Gytherik. Once a quester, always a quester. You’re stuck with it, lad.”

  “You’re right,” the youth answered. “So you can imagine how delighted I was when King Carter’s letter reached me—particularly when I learned I was to be in league again with you lot …”

  Hero turned to Eldin and grinned. “Funny how Homo ephemerans grows more like sapiens with continued contact, eh, old lad?”

  “It’s a two-edged sword,” Eldin answered. “I seem to remember my old mother warning me that I should stop being a dreamer or else the day might come when I couldn’t wake up. Seems she was right.”

  “Curious, that,” said Hero.

  Eldin was pleased. “You think so?”

  “Yes. I’ve never thought of you as having a mother.”

  Before Eldin could muster a sufficiently blistering answer, a lookout at the rail called out: “We’re there, Cap’n Dass. This is where we spotted those Lengites yesterday on our way into Ilek-Vad. You can still see the remains of their camp in and about the oasis.”

  The four got to their feet around the small table Limnar had had set central on the bridge. “Time to bring on your gaunts, Gytherik,” the sky-Captain said. “Let’s see how they perform as bloodhounds!”

  The gaunt-master went down onto the deck, threw back the covers of a large hatch and called out two of his gaunts. Sniffer and Biffer, he called them, two of the smaller gaunts with certain individual peculiarities of their own. Sniffer could follow scents and trails with deadly accuracy (though how this was accomplished with neither nose nor eyes was hard to say!) and Biffer was endowed with a completely uncharacteristic aggressiveness. Hence Sniffer would track the almost-humans while Biffer flew overhead on the lookout for ambushers and such.

  Up onto the deck the two waddled and flopped in their gaunt fashion, uncomfortable in the rays of the morning sun but eager to please their human (at least dream-human) master. He spoke to them, in no language Gnorri’s crew could hope to understand, and they shortly flapped overboard, and circled down to the desert floor. At the oasis Sniffer quickly picked up the scent of the horned ones, at which Biffer soared aloft, higher even than Gnorri II, to scan ahead with aggressively out-stretched neck.

  Soon Sniffer was flapping north-westward, ten feet or so above the sand and scrub, and Gnorri II changed course to follow the speeding gaunt. Hours passed in this fashion, with gaunts and ship following a more or less straight course, and the day gradually grew toward noon. The sun was high and hot and Gytherik began to worry about the welfare of his gaunts. The rest of the grim was safe and cool below decks in the cargo hold, but Sniffer and Biffer were starting to suffer from the sun’s bright rays.

  Just as the gaunt-master decided to call back his pets, Biffer began a frantic swooping and circling overhead, motions which were interspersed with a deliberate and very aggressive pointing forward. At that very moment, as Gytherik whistled the pair back to the ship, the reason for Biffer’s agitation came into view: a squat black galley rising from behind low hills some miles to the north-west.

  “A Leng ship!” cried Limnar. “Fat, black and ugly! She must have picked up our quarry.”

  “Aye,” Hero nodded, “and see how she rides so heavy? Her cargo is gold, I’ll give you odds! Leng gold—moon gold! That’s where your King Carter caricature came from. Well, we can’t just let her run. There are Lengites aboard with answers to our questions. It’s battle stations, Limnar—but whatever happens we have to take at least one of the almost-humans alive!”

  “Ahoy, crew!” the sky-Captain called down to his men. “Get me within hailing distance of yon black galley. We talk before we attack—and then perhaps we’ll not need to attack. But it’s battle stations anyway, just to be on the safe side. Right—let’s go!” And he clapped his hands sharply.

  There followed a flurry of activity. The crew prepared for aerial action; Gytherik brought out the rest of his grim onto the deck, where they clustered in the shade of the sails; Hero and Eldin donned swordbelts, swords and other small arms, and Gnorri II sank down to the level of the Leng ship and cautiously approached. Within hailing range at last, Limnar put hailer to lips and called:

  “Ahoy there, ship of Leng. This is Captain Limnar Dass speaking. Admiral Dass of Kuranes’ sky-fleet. I know your purpose here and my crew is at battle stations. Make no false move but oblige me by descending to the desert whence you came. We will follow you down.”

  After a slight pause, back came an answer in the guttural accents of Leng. “Ahoy, Dass of Serannian. This is free airspace. Your actions border on piracy. Leave us in peace and begone!”

  “Begone?” Limnar sputtered, his eyes widening in disbelief. “Begone?” He returned his lips to the hailer and roared, “Listen, you lippy Lengite! Land on the desert at once, or by all that’s holy I’ll—”

  A puff of smoke erupted from a cannon’s muzzle where it projected from one of the black galley’s ports. More puffs followed suit, all along the side of the black ship. An instant later there came the roar of the cannonade, and at the same time Gnorri II shuddered as she was hit by two or three of the balls. Part of the stern rail shattered and leaped skyward where a fourth shot struck home.

  “Conventional cannon!” roared Eldin, reeling at the rail as the ship rocked.

  “Theirs may be,” raged Limnar, “but mine are not!” And to the gunners he roared: “Return fire!”

  Gnorri’s cannon opened up on the instant, their balls chewing gaping holes in the black galley’s substructure. And out from th
ese holes poured a swirling green gas, a vapor which every man aboard Gnorri II remembered from the war against Zura. For this was that gas which neutralized a skyship’s flotation essence, denying her aerial buoyancy. Gnorri II’s cannon balls were filled with the stuff under pressure; they were designed to fragment within a ship’s hull, rupturing the enemy’s flotation bags and destroying her essence.

  More shots found their mark, until the black ship staggered from their impact. Her hull was now full of green gas, and such was its efficacy that already she was listing badly to port. She fired back, but lying at an angle as she was her gunners were faced with an impossible task. Their shots whistled harmlessly overhead.

  “She’s going!” Limnar yelled. “One more volley, now … fire!” And again the black ship shuddered as fresh holes appeared in her flank. Then, suddenly, her stern dipped steeply and she began to spiral down out of the sky. Members of her almost-human crew could be seen sliding down the tilting decks and falling like ants from the rigging. Her altitude was not great, however, and her spiralling descent more a glide than a fall proper. In less than a minute her twisting mass struck the desert in an explosion of planks and a snapping of masts, and the screams of her crew could plainly be heard echoing up on the desert’s thermals.

  Then, as Gnorri II began her own far more leisurely descent, scuttling figures could be seen running (and some limping) from the wreck of the Leng ship and hurrying off into the desert to hide. Seeing these refugees of the wreck, Gytherik turned to Gnorri’s captain.

  “Hold it, Limnar,” he said. “No need to go any lower than this. Sniffer here can seek out a couple of horned ones for us, and the rest of the grim can bring ’em back alive for questioning.” He went to the gaunts, grunted and gestured, and in another moment the grim was airborne and falling like a flock of leathery vultures to the floor of the desert. There Sniffer did his work with dispatch, and in a very short time a pair of struggling, fearful almost-humans were deposited none too gently on Gnorri II’s deck.

  “It’s question and answer time,” Eldin growled low in his throat. “And if no one objects, I think I’ll ask the questions!”

  CHAPTER IX

  Eldin: Inquisitor

  “You know,” said Hero in a quiet aside to Limnar and Gytherik, “it’s a funny thing, but of all dreamland’s unhuman creatures and beings, I reckon these almost-humans are just about the most obnoxious. I mean, I’m even learning to appreciate gaunts—a little. And I’ve had dealings with Zura’s zombies and Lathi’s termen. The former can’t help themselves and the latter are more termites than men. They have insect instincts—termentalities, so to speak. But these buggers—”

  “They are something else, I agree,” Limnar answered. “And I believe I know why we find them so objectionable. It’s because they are what they are: almost-human. Zura’s zombies, whatever they are now, were once men, poor creatures—and Lathi’s termen never were men. But the Lengites could be men! That is to say they’re intelligent, they have emotions (I think), they trade with men—however dubiously—and they share other human traits. They are, literally, almost-humans! That’s what so disgusts you: the fact that creatures so nearly men should be so, well, un-manlike.”

  Gytherik gave a little shudder. “Me, I prefer gaunts any old time. Even ghouls might be better than horned ones. King Carter, I’m told, has a personal friend in the ghoul-leader, who himself was once a waking-worlder. So ghouls can’t be all that bad.”

  “I never met a ghoul,” Hero shrugged, his attention on Eldin, “so I don’t know. But just look what the old lad’s up to.” Half-frowning, half-grinning, he nodded in Eldin’s direction. “You can talk about un-humans all you like, but when it comes to devious minds there’s nothing to touch the minds of men. And my pal there can be devilish devious when he’s of a mind.”

  The Wanderer had had the Lengites trussed up in small nets, to each of which he had attached a rope. Now, on his instructions, as Gnorri II sailed higher, her crew lowered the horned ones over the side and made fast the ropes to the ship’s rails. Eldin, grinning, leaned over the rail and peered down at them. He casually picked at his nails with the razor-sharp point of a wicked-looking knife.

  “Right, you two,” he said at last to the helplessly dangling pair. “Your Captain called us pirates, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t act the part. That being so, this is my version of walking-the-plank. It’s called cutting-the-rope. I’ll explain how it works … Are you listening?”

  Their yellow eyes gazed hatefully up at him; but each in his turn, they nodded. “Good,” Eldin continued. “Right then, this is how it works: I ask questions and you answer them—truthfully. If you don’t answer, or if I suspect you’re lying, then I cut through a little strand of rope. There are perhaps ten such strands to each rope. Now you black-hearted sods being what you are, there are bound to be lots of lies, which means that sooner or later one of you goes whistling down to the desert. Splish!” Eldin paused a moment to enjoy the low moans of terror which now floated up to him from his squat, until now silent, captives. Finally one of them spoke:

  “You could not do it,” came the creature’s paradoxically oily croak. “Your much-vaunted human compassion would never allow it.”

  “That voice,” said Limnar, frowning. He crossed to the rail and peered over. “Your red sash gives you away, my friend,” he said after a moment, speaking to one of Eldin’s victims. “Your sash and your voice. You are—were—the Captain of the wrecked ship!”

  “As one Captain to another, then,” came the gravelly answer, “I request you put an end to this and set us free. These waking-worlders are marked men. If you side with them you too are marked.”

  “When I asked you to land your ship you fired on us,” Limnar was quick to remind. “You are now paying the price. What the Wanderer does with you is no concern of mine.” He moved away from the rail.

  “Which leads me to my first question,” Eldin continued. “How, exactly, are we marked men? Hero and me, I mean?”

  The almost-human Captain clamped his wide mouth firmly shut and glared up at Eldin with a look designed to sear his soul. Slowly he turned in his net entanglement, his cloven hooves projecting, his horns caught in the fine mesh. Eldin waited for a second or two, then sliced at a rope—but not the Lengite Captain’s rope. Instead, threads parted and unwound in the rope of the crewman.

  “’Ere!” that miserable creature burst out in a guttural gabble. “That’s my rope you’re ’acking at, not ’is!”

  “Didn’t I mention that?” Eldin innocently asked. “But that’s the whole point of the exercise. You see, I know that your Captain will not let any harm befall you—which is to say that he’ll be obliged to answer my questions, right?” The Wanderer grinned—but so did the almost-human Captain!

  “Now then,” Eldin went on, poising his knife over the hapless crewman’s taut rope. “First I would like to know your name, Captain … ?”

  The Captain’s mouth was once again tight-clamped, however, his grin gone, slant-eyes glaring as before. Eldin’s blade caressed the crewman’s rope, at which that unfortunate creature immediately babbled: “’Ang on, ’ang on! ‘Is name is Hrill. Cap’n Hrill, ’e is, an’ ’e knows everything you want to—”

  “Quiet, fool!” Hrill hissed, glaring venomously at his underling where they swung together alongside Gnorri’s substructure. “Can’t you see you’re falling right into his trap?”

  “I’m in ’is trap!” the other hotly retorted.

  “Just you wait,” Hrill threatened. “When we’re out of this—”

  “If you’re ever that lucky,” Eldin cut him off. “Let’s have no more arguing now, Cap’n Hrill. Let’s have some answers. We were talking about marked men, if I remember right. How marked? By whom?”

  “Balls!” said Hrill.

  “Really!” said Eldin, apparently taken aback. “Rudeness does not become you.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I’m afraid I must make an example.” With that, and without furth
er warning, he sliced through the crewman’s rope. Its end zipped out of sight over the rail. The horned one’s thin scream came echoing up through thinner air, and Gnorri’s crew—Hero and Limnar too—rushed to the rail. Their horrified eyes barely had time to fix upon the hurtling, rope-trailing net and its wildly thrashing contents before it disappeared into a bank of clouds.

  Hero’s mouth, wide open in shock, snapped into a sudden grimace. “Eldin, I—”

  “Quiet, lad!” the Wanderer growled. “This is man’s work. I’ve always thought you were too soft …”

  Meanwhile Gytherik had beckoned Hero and Limnar to one side. Now he whispered: “It is not what it seems. If you count my gaunts you will see that there are only six. The other two are beneath the cloudbelt, where they’ve doubtless arrested the Lengite’s fall by now. Eldin planned the whole thing—with my assistance. We worked it out while Sniffer and the grim were down below hunting horned ones.”

  “And you thought it best that we should remain ignorant?” Hero could hardly believe his own ears.

  “If only you could have seen the look on your face as you looked over the rail—which doubtless Captain Hrill saw—you would understand why. Your horror looked so real that it lent the whole thing a marvelous authenticity.”

  “My horror was real!” Hero answered. But in another moment he was grinning. “Still, I can’t complain, can I?” He scratched his chin wonderingly. “Didn’t I say Eldin was a devious old dog?” Then his frown deepened. “Gytherik, are you sure you’re not descended from a waking-worlder?”

  At last the Wanderer had the almost-human Captain’s entire attention. There was little doubt now but that Hrill would tell him everything he wished to know, for the Lengite had obviously and very seriously overrated the human capacity for compassion. Eldin had just repeated his last question, in answer to which Hrill was even now babbling a perfectly acceptable answer.