“Go on,” said Hero quietly, his face ruddy in the firelight.
“She had a bruise or two, was otherwise unharmed—physically. But in her pretty head … whatever she saw, it robbed her of her senses. And they haven’t been returned to her. Afterward she spoke—or drooled and dribbled—of ‘eyes’ and a ‘mouth like a corkscrew,’ and of something ‘chalk white’ and ‘powerful’—something that sobbed as it sank a shining proboscis deep in her lover’s brain. And it sobbed: ‘My name is Augeren. Augeren, aye, and I hate you all!’”
“Lord!” said Hero, barely containing a brrr. “How you can lay it on when you’re in the mood! But you’re right: the things that girl said, however delirious or crazed she was/is, are very, very nasty …” He stood up straighter, squared his shoulders. “Hah! But back there in Celephais, in Kuranes’ manor-house, what did ‘nasty’ mean to us, eh? What did we care for ‘nasty’? What, after some of the things we’ve been up against?” He slumped. “Except we’re no longer in Celephais. Two or three miles thataway”—he pointed roughly south—“lies Inquanok the city. Thataway, Urg. And a good day’s march thataway”—(due north)—
“The gaunt gray peaks,” Eldin cut in. “Home to Shantaks and their mortal enemies the gaunts, barrier ’twixt sanity and Leng.”
“Or once-barner?” suggested Hero. And quickly continued: “But here’s us anyway, outsiders in these parts, paid for in golden tonds and pointed in the right direction—the most dangerous direction, obviously—then turned loose and forgotten. Questers, sellswords, mercenaries: riff-raff, by the lofty standards of these god-descended flint-faced Inquanokkies. And if we succeed, rid the land of this Augeren, what then? Fêted, applauded, even clapped on the back and thanked most sincerely? Not a bit of it! Done our job, that’s all. And if we fail?”
“We haven’t failed yet,” said Eldin. “Our reputations are safe so far.”
“Reputations? What makes you think I’m worried about our reps?” Hero narrowed his eyes, cocked his head on one side. “I meant what if we fail in the worst possible way?”
“You mean if he outsmarts us, this Augeren?” Eldin scowled. “Unthinkable! We don’t get beaten. Besides, we’re two and he’s only one.”
“How do we know he’s only one?” Hero questioned. “He could be an entire damned flock or pack for all we know! He could be something out of Leng, grown tired of a diet of horned-ones and now comes to try humans instead.”
“Leng-thing? Flock? Pack? Pah! And what do we care for overwhelming odds?” Eldin puffed himself up, thumped his chest once. “Why we’ve laughed in the faces of armies of zombies, almost-humans, termen, the lot!”
“But this,” Hero insisted, “is an Unknown Thing or Things that can drill into you and suck you bone dry—literally!”
Eldin puffed himself up more yet … and let it all out in a huge “Pheeew!” He scratched his beard and sat down close to the fire. “All right, you’ve convinced me,” he said. “Which way’s home?”
Hero kicked more dead wood on the blaze, walked round the leaping flames in a wide circle with his hands behind his back, and: “What else did Kuranes say?” he asked the other.
Eldin sighed. “Anyone’d think you weren’t there!”
“Ah, but you tell it so well—and I can listen to you and think at the same time.”
“Posses can’t get near it,” said Eldin. “Or rather, they get too near! The minute a posse sets up camp for the night—as soon as they set a watch—zzzt!” he made a slicing motion mid-beard. “One gone watchman …”
Hero slowly nodded, “All-seeing, aye,” he said. “The thing knows when folk go out after it. It knows what they’re up to. All-seeing and yet unseen, except by its marrowless victims and that one poor loony lass it spoke to and drove mad. And then there’s one last thing we know about it.”
“Oh?” Eldin watched Hero circle the fire and disappear out of the corner of his eye as he stepped round behind him. In the next moment Hero’s hand fell like a grapple on Eldin’s shoulder, hard as iron, gripping the cords of muscle between neck and shoulder proper. It was so sudden that Eldin gave a violent start.
“Darkness!” Hero whispered hoarsely in Eldin’s ear. “It doesn’t like the light, strikes only at night.”
“Damn me, lad!” Eldin shook himself loose. “Haven’t I enough gray hairs?” He stood up, looked all about in the fire’s glow. Beyond the firelight was pitch black, made blacker by the very fire itself. Black, silent night, and a thin leprous mist crawling on the ground. Eldin stooped, fed the flames liberally with wood gathered earlier, said: “So what are you leading up to? You said you’d been playing with its name, Augeren. So what did that get you?”
Hero continued to prowl in a circle. “Things linger,” he said, “in mind. I suppose hung over from the waking world.”
“Déjà vu,” said Eldin.
“Eh?”
“Never mind, another hangover. I’m saying I know what you’re talking about, that’s all.”
“I mean,” said Hero, almost to himself, “I don’t really know if it applies, but ‘Augeren’ does things to me. Even the first time I heard it, my mind sort of shied away from it. In one tongue, Augen means eyes, I think. And Augeren comes pretty close. So is that what this thing really calls itself: The Eyes?”
Eldin sat down again, pulled at an earlobe. “I begin to see what you’re getting at. That girl mentioned eyes, too …” He. nodded, added: “A seeing eye, gifted with night-vision, seeing in the darkness as clearly as in daylight.”
“More clearly!” said Hero. “Light hurts it—frightens it, anyway. It fled the cotters’ lanthorns still unfed.”
“A fly-the-light then,” Eldin was deeply involved with the puzzle now. “A vampire—but a very specialized vampire.”
“No taste for blood,” Hero supplied, “but bone marrow.”
“And … equipped to get it!” Eldin snapped his fingers. “‘Auger’!”
“Bravo!” said Hero, but grimly, quietly.
“An auger’s a wood-boring tool, isn’t it? A borer, anyway. It makes holes to prepare the wood—”
“—or bone—”
“—for nails or screws—”
“—or for a proboscis.”
“An auger, yes!” said Eldin. “You turn it this way and that—left and right, left and right—applying pressure, driving the point deep. Boring without splitting the wood.”
“Or without spilling the marrow.”
“Weird!” Eldin gave a little shiver.
“And that’s not all.”
“Oh?”
“What about ‘augury’?”
“Ah! Yes! Of course! A prognostication, a portent, vision of a rune-caster or soothsayer. From ‘augur,’ someone who reads the future.” He frowned. “Of course, the spelling’s up the creek.”
“But the meaning applies,” said Hero. “No wonder they’ve never seen him, can’t catch him. Not if he can read the future.”
“How much of the future?”
“The immediate future, anyway,” Hero answered. “Which gave him the edge over the cotters, allowed him to make a narrow escape.”
“Ah, yes! He ran from them.”
“Or flew, or flopped. From their lanthorns.”
“Hmm,”Eldin mused. “A far-sighted marrow-sucking chalk-white ESP-endowed wampir with a bad case of photophobia.”
Hero sat down, found a nice straight piece of dry branch and made to toss it on the fire—then paused. Instead, he took out his knife, began whittling one end into a long sharp point.
“Stake?” Eldin inquired.
Hero said nothing, continued to work.
Eldin took out his own knife, seated himself, followed the other’s example with another piece of wood. After a while he said, “I wish I could.”
“Eh?”
“See the future. Just a little bit of it. Say, through the night to morning. That would be enough—for now, anyway.”
In the utter darkness of an old, worked-out
quarry, in a cave not two miles away, Augeren sat and communed with the night. One of his eyes was skinned-over, blind, like the vestigial orb of some queer cave-dwelling frog, the other glittered with many facets, seemed almost metallic, insect-like.
Augeren was hungry. In his mouth, his great wedge of a tongue turned this way and that, oscillating the rasps along its sides; saliva dripped from its hollow needle-tip.
In the facets of his glittering eye, myriad mirror-images showed a near-distant scene: a pair of questers, huddled beside their fire. They whittled away and their shavings went into the fire, which in any case would burn all night. Augeren blinked and the picture disappeared, his eye grew dull; he blinked again and a new picture was framed in myriad reflections. Three miles away, toward Urg, a quarrier and his son sat over their small fire in the lee of a mighty boulder and talked in whispers. The father swigged liberally from a bottle of muth-dew, his voice was already slurred. Nearby, a small stock of damp sticks would not last out the night.
Augeren blinked again and the picture was wiped from his eye. He was hungry. He stirred himself. Something ghastly white moved in the darkness. The cave echoed a single sob …
A drear day followed for Hero and Eldin, one which hardly brightened at all past dawn, but continued the same, in gray drizzle and rolling banks of mist, until evening. Then the weather changed (albeit slightly) for the better; the descending sun, falling far to the south-west, seemed finally to burn its way through cloud-layers high and low, drying out the steamy earth; evening’s first stars became visible like ghost-lights in the sky, phosphorescent fire trapped high overhead. Or, as Eldin described it:
“It’s like lying on your back in a bowl of thin milk, staring up at fireflies floating on the surface.”
“Never tried it,” said Hero, “but I’m sure you’re right. Just as soggy, too!”
They’d put on a change of clothes, were drying out their first sets on a pole over the remains of a cooking fire built in the mouth of a shallow cave. Supper had consisted of roasted rabbit and crusts of dry bread, washed down with tepid tea: satisfying, if not especially savory. Now, as night drew in, the fire was dying into its own embers, and the pair had no plans to replenish it. Its low flicker illuminated the mouth of their cave with yellow light.
One hundred yards away in the same quarry, there was another cave, deeper and darker than this one. But then, there were many caves. The quarry was honeycombed with old onyx works.
“How long has it been?” Hero asked morosely, of no one in particular.
Eldin answered anyway. “Four days and three nights, this being the fourth. On the first night we lost our yak.”
“You lost our yak!” Hero accused. “Tethering it to the merest twig like that. Ate the twig and bolted, didn’t it.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. “We were lucky we’d unloaded the beast.”
“Trained!” Eldin scowled.
“Huh!”.
“Trained, I tell you!” the Wanderer insisted. “That damned Inquanokky who sold us the scrawny beast … I’ll wager he’s sold that same yak a dozen times before ever we bought it! And the first chance it gets—off like a homing pigeon. Right now, it’ll be back in a field with the rest of the pack.”
“Herd,” said Hero.
“’Course you did,” said Eldin. “Else you’re deaf as a post.”
Hero ignored him. “Second night, we could have had a room at that farmhouse.”
Eldin shuffled a bit where he sat. “Well, we did all right,” he said under his breath.
“We slept in a leaky barn!” Hero barked. “Because you kept ogling the old boy’s daughters—who were ugly as hell anyway!”
Eldin knew it was true so didn’t argue this point. Instead he made one of his own. “Now last night,” he said, “that must have been the worst of the lot! It drizzled on and off and neither one of us got a decent kip, taking turns to watch and all. Dry one minute and soaked the next, turning myself round by the fire to warm all sides—like a chicken on a spit. This morning I felt three-quarters poached! You and your too-fertile imagination. Augen and augers and auguries, indeed!”
“It was uncomfortable, guaranteed,” said Hero. “But this morning we both had marrow in our bones, right? It was the fire kept him away—”
“—if he was anywhere near—”
“—and the fact that one of us was alert at all times.”
“Eh? Alert?” Eldin looked mildly surprised. “Ah, alert! Oh, yes—of course.”
“What?” Hero howled, jumping up and nearly cracking his head on the cave’s ceiling. “Tell me you’re joking!”
“Er, I’m joking. Yes,” said Eldin.
“Tell me right now, this moment!”
“But I already—”
“Are you saying you didn’t keep your watch? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I mean, I didn’t lie down, you understand,” he held up his hands placatingly. “I was sitting up!”
“Sitting up? Sitting up asleep? It’s a wonder you weren’t eaten up! And me lying there, unconcerned, because I knew that good old faithful Eldin was keeping watch!”
“We had a damn great roaring fire!” Eldin finally exploded. “Old Augeren’s afraid of light, remember?”
“But we don’t know that for sure.”
“We know it sure enough that tonight we’re deliberately luring the bugger by not keeping a fire!”
“Tonight’s different,” Hero said, his disgust visibly mounting. “Tonight we’ve a cave at our backs. Tonight we’ll be awake—both of us—all night. Or will we? I mean, I’m damned if I know whether to trust you any more. I can’t believe it, don’t want to believe it. Sleeping on the job like that. You, my dearest, most faithful—” He nearly choked on that last word, turned away.
Eldin felt bad, stood up. It seemed he’d really done it this time. It wasn’t deliberate—never that—but the fire had been so warm! “I mean,” he said, “—damn me, lad, but I didn’t actually, well, sleep. I just probably nodded off a bit, that’s all.”
Hero kept his back turned, allowed his head to droop tiredly, let his broad shoulders slump. He made no answer, but merely sighed.
“I mean—” Eldin was desperate now, “is there no way I can make it up to you?”
Hero’s shoulders slumped more yet.
“I’d do almost anything …”
“Anything?” Hero straightened up a little but didn’t look at the other.
“Anything, aye,” said Eldin gruffly. He put his hand tentatively on the younger quester’s shoulder.
Hero turned and grinned—a grin like the jerk of the line that fixes the hook in the fish’s mouth. “Very well,” he said. “There’s an hour yet to full dark. I’m getting an hour’s shut-eye while you keep watch. Wake me up when the last embers are dead, right?”
“Why … you … you!” Eldin hissed. “Of all the—”
Hero’s eyes widened in warning. He tilted his head up and out into the night, said: “Shhh! Listen!”
Eldin held his breath, listened, heard … something!
“He’s … that way,” Hero whispered, casually stooping, pouring water from the kettle on to the fire’s embers. Steam rose up, hissing to match his whispering: “Probably hasn’t seen you, just me. The night wind’s from his direction, so he’s unlikely to have heard us either. Keep back, out of sight. Let him come. And when he jumps me, you jump him!”
Hero was right. The older quester stood further back in the cave and to one side of the fire, and the sound—a slithering of pebbles in the dark, a furtive scraping of stone—had come from along the foot of the old diggings. Who or whatever it was, out there in the night, might not have seen Eldin—but he would certainly have seen Hero.
Eldin shrank back, became one with the shadows of the cave. His sword came out of its scabbard easy as silk, soundlessly. All clowning was done now, buffooning and mock-arguments put aside. This was for real. When it came to stealth, Eldin was like a cat in the dark. An
d when it came to acting, never a one like Hero.
He was acting now, playing the role of the lone traveler, maybe a prospector, making camp out here in the misty night after a long day’s panning or grubbing. He stood tall, threw up his arms and stretched, apparently easing his joints. Then he yawned, long and audibly, and scratched himself for a moment before hunkering down and pulling a blanket round his shoulders. He hadn’t killed the fire completely; red embers made his face ruddy, glinted on the steel he shielded with his blanket. In one hand a knife, and in the other a sharpened stake!
Eldin couldn’t help but admire his partner. Cool as a cucumber, Hero, but sharp as a razor. Why, just listen to him now: whistling away to himself, however tunelessly, and keeping away the night’s evil spirits. All except one …
There came more sounds: shale sliding, a low panting—a sob! Then—
Something rushed, floundered out of the dark. A ragged thing, long arms reaching. Swift as thought, it fell on Hero!
Hero tried to turn as the thing crushed his huddled figure down. He tried to direct his sharp stake; failed, as desperately strong arms clutched him tight.
Heart in mouth, Eldin pounced.
“Son! Son! Is that you?” the ragged apparition hugged Hero in its smothering embrace. “Ah, my boy—my dear boy! I thought—”
Eldin grabbed the gabbling thing’s hair and yanked; at the same time, Hero got his muscles bunched under him and came erect. The night-comer was sent flying, sprawling, and in the next moment the questers were on him. Eldin’s sword went aloft, twin-gripped in hands like a pair of hams; Hero’s stake was poised on high as he slid on his knees in scree and pebbles beside …
Beside the prone body of a pale, frightened, red-eyed man!
Still taking no chances, Eldin lowered the point of his sword to the stranger’s throat. Hero balanced his stake over the man’s heart, applied enough pressure to hold it there.
The red eyes in the white mask of a face went from Hero to Eldin, back to Hero. “Not … not my son?” said the stranger, quite obviously a man of Inquanok. Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. “Then he’s surely dead!”