A coarse chuckle. “Oh, I believe it, all right. I was first with her, remember?”
“You were last with her, too—pig!” spat the first voice. “Well, get on with it, then. If you want this fellow dead, get it done. We’ve beasts to chase and miles to cover back to Chlangi. Pull out the arrow, that’ll do for him. His life—if any’s left—will leak out red as wine!”
Thull did as Hylar suggested, and shuddering as fresh waves of agony dragged him under, the Hrossak’s mind shrank down into pits of the very blackest jet….
• • •
Tarra Khash, the Hrossak, inveterate wanderer and adventurer, had a lust for life which drove him ever on where other men would fail. And it was that bright spark, that tenacious insistence upon life, which now roused him up before he could bleed to death. That and the wet, frothy ministrations of his camel, kneeling beside him in starlit ruins, where it washed his face and grunted its camel queries. This was the animal Tarra had used as mount, which, over the two hundred miles now lying in their wake, had grown inordinately fond of him. Eluding its pursuers, it had returned to its master much as a dog might do, and for the past half-hour had licked his face, kneed him in the ribs, and generally done whatever a camel might for a man.
Finally coming awake, Tarra gave its nose an admonitory slap and propped himself up into a seated position. He was cold but his back felt warm, stiff and sticky; aye, and he could feel a trickle of fresh blood where his movements had cracked open a half-formed scab. In the dirt close at hand lay the man he’d killed, Gumbat Chud, and between them a bloody arrow where it had been wrenched from his back and thrown down. Tarra’s scab bard lay within reach, empty of its broken sword. They’d taken it for its jewels, of course.
Staring at the arrow, his blood dry on its point, Tarra remembered the conversation he’d heard before he blacked out. He especially remembered the names of the two who had stood over him: Hylar and Thull, Gumbat Chud’s bandit brothers. Rogues out of Chlangi, aye—and dead ones when he caught up with them!
But for now…the Hrossak was fortunate and he knew it. Only a most unlikely set of circumstances had spared him. The ambushers might easily have slit his throat, but they hadn’t wanted to waste time. Indeed, Chud’s arrow might have missed the scabbard and hit his heart, which would have ended things at once! Also, the reavers could have caught instead his camel—this one, which carried food, water, blankets, all those things necessary for the maintenance of life—and probably had caught the three pack animals, which were far more heavily laden.
Heavily laden indeed!
Tarra thought about all the gold and jewels those animals carried: twelve full saddle bags! And wouldn’t those badland marauders lose their eyeballs when they turned them on that lot! What a haul! Tarra almost wished he was one of his ambushers—except that wasn’t his line of work. Ah, well: easy come, easy go—for now. Until he caught up with those two. Anyway, it was his own fault. Only a damn fool would have tried to take a king’s ransom through a den of thieves and out the other side. And he’d known well enough Chlangi’s reputation.
Tomb-loot—hah! Ill-gotten gains. And hadn’t his father always warned him that anything you didn’t work hard for wasn’t worth having? Trouble was, he’d never heeded his father anyway. Also, he had worked hard for it. Damned hard! He thought of the subterranean sarcophagi of ancient, alien kings whose tombs were a source of loot—and of his narrow escape from that place—and shuddered. And again: tomb-loot, hah!
Tarra’s head argued with his back as to which of them hurt worst. Climbing groggily to his feet, he gently shrugged his blanket robe from his shoulders, wincing a little where it had adhered to drying scab of blood, then washed the wound as best he could with clean water from a skin in the camel’s packs. The arrow had not gone deep; his broken sword’s leather scabbard had saved him. Now he wrapped that scabbard in a soft cloth and re-strapped it tight in former position across his back, thus staunching the flow of blood. Then…a kerchief soaked in water round his head, and a bite of dried meat and gulp of sour wine, and Tarra was ready to take up the chase. It wasn’t a wise pursuit, he knew—indeed it might well be the last thing he ever did—but that’s the way it was with Tarra Khash. Hylar and Thull, whoever they were, had hurt him deliberately and for no good reason, and now he would hurt them. Or die trying….
The night was still young, not long past the midnight hour, when he struggled up into his mount’s ridgy saddle and goaded the beast once more in the direction of Chlangi, cursing low under his breath as each smallest jolt set his head to ringing and his back to dull, angry throbbing. And so, at a pace only a little faster than walking, Tarra Khash, the Hrossak journeyed again under moon and stars.
He went wary now, his eyes tuned to the night, but for a mile or two there was nothing. Then—
Tarra was not aware what it was exactly which drew his eyes to the cross lying silvered on the side of a dune; in other circumstances (were his senses not so alert for strange smells, sights or sounds) then he might have passed it by. It could have been a figure of white stone, or a scattering of bones, or simply the bleached roots of an olive or carob tree long drowned in the desert’s ergs and sandpapered to a reflective whiteness; but whichever, he turned his camel’s head that way.
And as he drew closer…what he saw then brought him down from the back of his beast in a blur of painful motion, tossing his blanket over the naked, ravaged figure of a girl pegged down on the gentle slope of the dune. A moment more and he pressed water-soaked kerchief to cracked, puffed lips, then breathed a sigh of relief as the girl’s throat convulsed in a choke, and breathed more deeply as she first shook her head and finally sucked at the cloth where he held it to her mouth. Then she gazed at Tarra through eyes bruised as fallen fruit and dusted with fine sand, wriggled a little way back from him, affrightedly, and tried to ask:
“Who—?”
But he cut her off with, “Shh! Be still. I’ll not harm you.”
Even as she continued to cringe from him, he tore up the long pegs and ties which bound her to the earth and broke them, then wiped her fevered face with damp rag and wrapped her in the blanket. A moment later and she lay across the camel’s saddle, face down, while he swiftly led the beast from this brutal place in search of some rude shelter.
In a little while he found low, broken walls with sand drifted against them, and to one of these pegged a sheet of tentage to form a refuge. Therein he lay the unprotesting girl and propped up her head so that she could watch him while he built a fire in the lee of the wall just outside the tent. Over the fire he boiled up soup from a pouch of herbs and dried vegetables, and likewise fried several near-rancid strips of bacon in their own fat on a flat stone until they were crisp and sweet. These he offered to the girl, but having merely tasted the soup and sniffed at the bacon she then refused both, offering a little shake of her head.
“Well, I’m sorry, lass,” Tarra told her, squatting down and satisfying his own hunger, “but this is the best I can do. If you’re used to finer fare I’m sure I don’t know where I’ll find it for you in these parts!” He went to the camel and brought her the last of his wine, and this she accepted, draining the skin to the last drop. Then, while Tarra finished his food she watched him closely, so that he was ever aware of her eyes upon him. For his own part, however obliquely, he watched her, too.
He little doubted that this was the girl those curs out of Chlangi had laughed about, which in itself would form a bond between them, who had both suffered at the hands of those dogs; but just as the bandits had done before him, he too marvelled at the mystery of it: a girl like this, wandering alone beneath the stars in so desolate a place. She seemed to read his thoughts, and said:
“I make…a pilgrimage. It is a requirement of my…order, that once in a five-year I go to a secret place in the Nameless Desert, there to renew my…vows.”
Tarra nodded. “Who is your god?” he asked, thinking: for he’s let you down sorely this night, and no mistake!
>
“His name is…secret,” she answered in a moment. “I may not divulge it.”
“Myself,” said Tarra, “I’m partial to Old Gleeth, blind god of the moon. He’s out tonight in all his glory—do you see?”
And he lifted up the skirt of the tent, so that moonbeams fell within. The girl shrank back into shadow.
“The light,” she said. “So silvery…bright.”
Tarra let fall the flap, sat staring at her through eyes narrowed just a fraction. “Also,” he said, “I’ll not have anything said against Ahorra Izz, god of—”
“—scarlet scorpions,” she finished it for him, the hint of a hiss in her voice.
Slowly Tarra nodded. “He’s a rare one,” he said, ‘Ahorra Izz. I wouldn’t have thought many would know of him. Least of all a young sister of—”
“In my studies,” she whispered, cutting him off, “I have concerned myself with all the gods, ancient and modern, of all the peoples of Theem’hdra. A god is a god, black or white—or scarlet. For how may one conceive of Good if one has no knowledge of Evil?”
And vice versa, thought Tarra, but he answered: “How indeed? Truth to tell, I didn’t find Ahorra Izz at all evil. In fact I’m in his debt!”
Before he could say more or frame another question, she asked: “Who are you?”
“Tarra Khash,” he answered at once, in manner typically open. “A Hrossak. I was set upon by the same pack of hairies who…happened your way. They robbed me. Aye, and they put an arrow in my back, too. Hence my stiffness. I was tracking them back to Chlangi when I found you. Which makes you a complication. Now I have your skin to consider as well as my own. Mine’s not worth a lot to anyone, but yours…?” He shrugged.
She sat up, more stiffly than Tarra, and the blanket fell away from her. Under the bruises she was incredibly lovely. Her beauty was…unearthly.
“Come,” she held out a marble arm. “Let me see your back.”
“What can you do?” he asked. “It’s a hole, that’s all.” But he went to her anyway. On hands and knees he looked at her, close up, then turned his back and sat down. He unfastened the straps holding his empty scabbard in place, and her hands were so gentle he didn’t even feel her take the scabbard away.
And anyway—what could she do? She had no unguents or salves, not even a vinegar-soaked pad.
And yet…Tarra relaxed, sighed, felt the pain going out of his shoulder as easy as the air went out of his lungs. Well, now he knew what she could do. Ointments, balms?—hah! She had fingers, didn’t she? And now Tarra believed he knew her order: she was a healer, a very special sort of physician, a layer-on of hands. He’d heard of such but never seen one at work, never really believed. But seeing—or rather, feeling—was believing!
“A pity you can’t do this for yourself,” he told her.
“Oh, I shall heal, Tarra Khash,” she answered, her voice sibilant. “Out there in the desert, under the full moon, I was helpless, taken by surprise no less than you. Now I grow stronger. Your strength has become mine. For this I thank you.”
Tarra’s voice was gruff now. “Huh! If you’d take some food you’d grow stronger faster!”
“There is food and food, Tarra Khash,” she answered, her voice hypnotic in its caress. “For all you have offered, I am grateful.”
Tarra’s senses were suddenly awash in warm, languid currents. Her hands had moved from his shoulder to his neck, where now they drew out every last trace of tension. Her head on his shoulder, she cradled his back with her naked breasts. He slumped—and at once jerked his head erect, or tried to. What had she been saying? Grateful for what he’d offered? “You’re welcome to whatever I have,” he mumbled, scarcely aware of her sharp intake of breath. “Not that there’s much….”
“Oh, but there is! There is!” she whispered. “Much more than I need, and though I’m hungry I shall take very little. Sleep now, sleep little mortal, and when you wake seek out those men and take your vengeance—while yet you may. For if I find them first there’ll be precious little left for you!”
Sweet sister of mercy? A healer? Layer-on of hands? Nay, none of these. Even sinking into uneasy slumbers, Tarra tried to turn his drowsy head and look at her, and failed. But he did force out one final question: “Who…
are you?”
She lifted her mouth from his neck and his blood was fresh on her pale lips. “My name is Orbiquita!” she said—which was the last thing he heard before the darkness rolled over him. The last thing he felt was her hot, salty kiss….
• • •
“Lamia!” snapped Arenith Han, seer and rune-caster to the robber-king, Fregg, of doomed Chlangi. “She was a lamia, a man-lusting demon of the desert. You two are lucky to be alive!”
It was Fregg’s dawn court, held in the open courtyard of his “palace”, once a splendid place but now a sagging pile in keeping with most of Chlangi’s buildings. Only the massive outer walls of the city itself were undecayed, for Fregg insisted that they at least be kept in good order. To this end he used “felons” from his court sessions, on those rare occasions when such escaped his “justice” with their lives intact.
Chlangi’s monarch was one Fregg Unst, a failed con man long, long ago hounded out of Kliihn on the coast for his frauds and fakeries. His subjects—in no wise nicer persons than Fregg himself—were a rabble of yeggs, sharpers, scabby whores and their pimps, unscrupulous taverners and other degenerates and riff-raff blown here on the winds of chance, or else fled from justice to Chlangi’s doubtful refuge. And doubtful it was.
Chlangi the Doomed—or the Shunned City, as it is elsewhere known—well deserved these doleful titles. For of all places of ill-repute, this were perhaps the most notorious in all the Primal Land. And yet it had not always been this way.
In its heyday the city had been opulent, its streets and markets bustling with merchants, its honest taverners selling vintages renowned throughout the land for their clean sweetness. With lofty domes and spires all gilded over, walls high and white, and roofs red with tiles baked in the ovens of Chlangi’s busy builders, the city had been the veriest jewel of Theem’hdra’s cities. Aye, and its magistrates had had little time for members of the limited criminal element.
Now…all good and honest men shunned the place, and had done so since first the lamia Orbiquita built her castle in the Desert of Sheb. Now the gold had been stripped from all the rich roofs, the grapevines had returned to the wild, producing only small, sour grapes and flattening their rotten trellises; arches and walls had toppled into disrepair, and the scummy water of a many-fractured aqueduct was suspect indeed. Only the rabble horde and their robber-king now lived here, and outside the walls a handful of hungry, outcast beggars.
Now, too, Fregg kept the land around well scouted, where day and night men of his were out patrolling in the badlands and along the fringe of the desert, intent upon thievery and murder. Occasionally there were caravans out of Eyphra or Kliihn; or more rarely parties of prospectors out of Kluhn headed for the Mountains of Lohmi, or returning therefrom; and exceeding rare indeed lone wanderers and adventurers who had simply strayed this way. Which must surely elevate the occurrences of last night almost to the fabulous. Fabulous in Fregg’s eyes, anyway, which was one of the reasons he had brought his scouts of yester-eve to morning court.
Their tale had been so full of fantastic incident that Fregg could only consider it a fabrication, and the tale wasn’t all he found suspect.
Now the court was packed; battle-scarred brigands rubbed shoulders with nimble thieves and cutthroats, and Fregg’s own lieutenants formed a surly jury whose only concern was to “get the thing over, the accused hanged, and on with the day’s gaming, scheming and back-stabbing.” Which did not bode well for transgressors against Fregg’s laws!
Actually, those laws were simple in the extreme:
Monies and goods within the city would circulate accord ing to barter and business, with each man taking his risks and living, subsisting or existing in accordance
with his acumen. Monies and so on from without would be divided half to Fregg and his heirs, one third to the reaver or reavers clever enough to capture and bring it in, and the remaining one-sixth part to the city in general, to circulate as it might. More a code than a written law proper, there was only one real law and it was this: Fregg’s subjects could rob, cheat, even kill each other; they could sell their swords, souls or bodies; they could bully, booze and brawl all they liked and then some…except where it would be to annoy, inconvenience, pre-empt or otherwise interfere with, or displease, Fregg. Simple.
Which meant that on this occasion, in some way as yet unexplained, last night’s far-scavenging scouts had indeed displeased Fregg; a very strange circumstance, considering the fantastic haul they’d brought back for him!
Now they were here, dragged before Fregg’s “courtiers” and “council” and “jury” for whatever form of inquisition he had in mind, and Arenith Han—a half-breed wizard of doubtful dexterity, one time necromancer and failed alchemist in black Yhem, now Fregg’s right-hand man—had opened the proceedings with his startling revelation.
“What say you?” Burly, bearded Fregg turned a little on his wooden stool of office behind a squat wooden table, to peer at his wizard with raised eyebrows. “Lamia? This girl they ravaged was a lamia? Where’s your evidence?”
Central in the courtyard, where they were obliged to stand facing into a sun not long risen, Hylar Arf and Thull Drinnis shuffled and grimaced, surly at Fregg’s treatment of them. But no use to protest, not at this stage; they were here and so must face up to whatever charge Fregg brought against them. The fallen wizard’s examination of their spoils, and his deductions concerning the same and the nature of at least one of their previous owners, that was simply for openers, all part of the game.
Sharing space in the central area were two camels, a pair of white yaks and, upon the ground, blankets bearing various items. Upon one: tatters of sorely dishevelled female apparel; upon the other, eight saddlebags, their contents emptied out in a pile of gleam and glitter and golden, glancing fire. Treasure enough to satisfy even the most avaricious heart—almost. Probably. Possibly.