“Oh, I do, I do,” answered Hero, impressed. “You’ve obviously given these Dukes of Isharra a deal of thought.”
“I do my homework,” the other stated, a little too smugly for Hero’s liking.
“Oh, good!” he said, straining his eyes to peer up, down and sideways at the cocoon encasing his head. “Fore-warned is fore-armed, eh? Whatever would we have done if you hadn’t done your homework?”
“Listen, scut—” warned Eldin, but before he could continue the ambush party came to a halt where the ruins of a house formed a square of broken walls. The walls were rough and thick, forming black shadows away from the building, while inside all was yellow and orange glare reflected from a central fire … and a circle of ruddy faces, turning as one to stare at the captives where they were bundled through a gap in the wall and into the firelight.
“A warm, healthy glow, that,” Hero observed under his breath.
“A fire to serve human needs,” Eldin returned, his ire quickly evaporating. “I think we’re about to be introduced to those so-called ‘Lords’ our squat little friend was talking about. Namely, the so-called—”
“Dukes of Isharra,” a steely, ringing voice cut him short. “At your service, gentlemen.”
Two figures stood up and stepped clear of the seated circle, peering curiously at the questers where they were now propped upright in their cocoons. Held in that position by several of Zura’s zombies, the pair could only stare back. The rest of their escort, having fulfilled their task, now melted away into the night.
The Dukes stepped closer, and it could now be seen that they were near-identical twins. Dressed in gold-threaded jackets and fur-lined silken breeches—with thigh-boots of red leather, belts bearing gold-filigreed swords, their hands and wrists heavy with gold—the only immediate difference between them appeared to be the livid scar which one of them wore above his right eye; whose gouge faded away vertically into his crew-cut hair, giving his eye a fixed and permanently devilish cast. Of the two, however, this one seemed most talkative; and if his voice had the ring of steel, certainly his words were no less cutting:
“You’ll be Eldin the Wanderer,” he said, prodding Eldin’s cocooned chest with a stiff, blunt finger. “Oh, yes, you fit your description well enough. Ugly, brutish—full of a false bravado …”
“See here—” Eldin growled, the very rumble of his voice threatening to burst the cocoon. But the steely-voiced speaker merely flipped him in the mouth with a gold-worked glove. At that Eldin snarled incoherently, almost mindlessly, and gritting his teeth strained desperately against the tough strands which bound him.
“Be still!” snapped the Duke. “And be quiet! When I want you to speak I’ll say so. No man talks back to Byharrid-Imon Isharra without his permission.”
Now his brother came forward, tilting his head up a little to gaze into Hero’s ice-blue eyes. Tall though the brothers were by the standards of dreamland, still Hero stood taller. “And you’ll be David Hero,” this one said, his voice like the smoke of hot oil. “Or Hero of Dreams, as you are known.” There was a strangely hybrid look about his sallow, unpleasant, overlarge features—an almost feminine tilt to his cheekbones and eyebrows. “A singer of songs, eh?” he continued. “A poet …” He reached out to touch Hero’s cheek with a pointed, manicured fingernail.
Hero drew back his head (as best he could) and spat straight into the Duke’s eye. “And you’ll be Gathnod-Natz’ill Isharra,” he evenly answered as the other staggered away dabbing at his face. “As woolly a woofter as ever I saw—in dreams or out of ’em!”
“I do believe he’s discovered one of your little vices, brother,” Byharrid-Imon gave a dry, barking laugh.
“Damned right!” Hero quietly agreed. “And to think I worried about my Ula with him. Why, he’d not know what to do with her!”
“Oh, he surely would,” laughed Byharnd-Imon. “His tastes are wide-ranging, that’s all.”
Now the circle of figures seated around the fire stood up as Gathnod-Natz’ill finally got Hero’s spit out of his eye and drew his sword. “Damn you!” he cried in his girlish voice. “First you wound us sorely by stealing off with our future brides, and now you add insult to injury! We’ll see how well you can spit without a tongue, David Hero.”
The zombies holding the pair upright backed stumblingly away, leaving them to rock in their silk-paper cocoons—which it now fully appeared would be their coffins. Byharrid-Imon also drew his sword, aiming it at Eldin.
“Aye,” he said, his voice low now but ringing still, “my brother’s right. We’ve suffered enough from you two. Not only did we lose face when you stole our brides-to-be, but we lost money, too. Why, we’ve paid bounty-hunters a small fortune for your heads! And now you come along, delivering them to us yourselves, and all of your own free will.” He chuckled, however bleakly. “Oh, don’t worry, Hero, for I shan’t let my brother kill you. Not just yet. If he desires your tongue, however—”
“Cowardly dogs!” Eldin roared. “If my arms were only free—”
“Your voice,” said Byharrid-Imon warningly, “continues to annoy me. It is altogether too deep and strong.” He pointed his sword at Eldin’s lower middle. “I think I should prefer it castrato. After all, if my brother intends taking a trophy … well, shouldn’t I claim one also! Perhaps two?”
Now the figures about the fire came forward and closed upon the questers. Some of them were true men, Isharrans, with the same unhandsome looks as their leaders, and the rest were almost-humans. The men were silent, perhaps a little resentful of their masters (or else just naturally surly) but the Lengites were filled with a hideous excitement.
“Go on,” one of them chortled to Gathnod-Natz’ill. “Take his tongue. Here, let me reach up and open his jaws for you.” And Hero felt foul paws groping at his face.
Another tore at the terman webbing binding Eldin’s lower body. “And you, Lord Byharnd-Imon. Here, let me fix this for you, so that you may take—”
“Take nothing—touch nothing!” came a commanding female voice from on high. And as the Isharran party fell back in astonishment, so a black shadow drifted slowly over the ruins. Up above, a leprous white ship had moved silently into view.
“I have first claim on those two,” came the voice again, “for they have sinned more against me than any other. Lucky for me that my siblings brought word of their capture. Lucky, too, for you Dukes; for if you had harmed them you would pay. I have my own plans for them.”
A window in the ship’s side framed a face of incredible beauty. Rocking back on his heels to see that face more clearly, Eldin gasped: “Lathi!”
“Aye, Lathi,” she answered, her voice utterly humourless. “The Eidolon Lathi, whose city, Thalarion, you burned to the ground!”
As she spoke, termen on the ship’s deck let down sticky silken gobs of stuff on strong threads, swinging them until they contacted and adhered to the cocoons of the questers. Before the Isharrans could make a move, Hero and Eldin were hauled up from the ruins and out of their reach. In a matter of seconds they were being dragged aboard the white ship.
“Out of the frying pan,” muttered Hero grimly as strong termen hands closed on him.
“And into the fire—” the Wanderer groaningly finished it for him.
CHAPTER III
Ship of Paper, Ship of Death
“Paper!” Eldin rumbled. “No wonder the ship looks so leprous and lumpy. She’s made of the same sort of material they use to build their cities, a variation on this binding muck that’s wrapping us.”
“Pretty strong muck,” Hero answered, “as witness our inability to break out of it.”
“Aye, but it burns well enough,” Eldin darkly reminded. “I may have lost my sword—that good one of mine, shattered and reconstituted by the power of the First Ones—but I still have my firestones.”
“Fat chance you’ll get to use them,” Hero answered. “Not a second time. But right enough, the ship would burn like a torch. Take note: there ar
e no lamps here. See, the light comes from those tiny luminous mushrooms growing out of the woodwork—er, the paperwork. And look—even the sails are like mighty shavings of softwood!”
Now they were bundled into Lathi’s cabin and brought face to face with the Eidolon herself. Each quester was held upright by a pair of termen, whose wickedly curving knives were held poised to strike at first sign of a false move—though how the adventurers might contrive to make even a tiny false move was anybody’s guess. And finally, her voice much quieter now but no less deadly, Lathi spoke:
“So, we meet again. You, David Hero, who sang songs to me to lull me into sleep. And you, Eldin the Wanderer, whose firestones turned my lovely Thalarion to ashes. Ah, but this time we meet in a much colder clime. And there is a coldness between us that may only be dispelled when you two are no more.”
Silently the pair stared at her, attempting to fathom the depths of her mind, to know her thoughts. She was as beautiful as Hero remembered her—the top half of her, anyway. But where her waist disappeared into silky ruffles of glossy pink and purple paper, there the horror began. For the hidden part of Lathi had more than ten times the mass of the visible; and like an iceberg’s submerged portion, the unseen was far more lethal than the seen.
There were curtains to one side of her bench-like seat, which billowed slightly as Hero’s eyes found them. Back there, where Lathi’s termaids doubtless worked even now, massaging and smoothing with soft oils and supple hands, her monstrous lower body was that of a Queen termite—whose appetite was more monstrous yet. Hero could not help but shudder, and Lathi saw his grimace.
“Still you spurn me,” she hissed, “who might have known the final, intimate ecstasy of my embrace. Well, that offer is no longer open to you. You are not worthy.” Her eyes narrowed perceptibly. “How would you die, David Hero?”
“Any other way than—” he began, and instantly wished he could bite off his tongue. “With a sword in my hand,” he hastily went on. “The way I have lived.”
“Aye, likewise,” said Eldin.
“Ah, Wanderer!” Lathi’s voice was poisonous sweet as she turned her gaze upon Eldin. “But no … no, your fate was decided the day you doomed the hive city—by fire!”
“It was you played with fire first,” Eldin reminded. “Threatening to burn down that poor defenseless Great Tree.”
“The Tree, defenseless?” Her face twisted in fury. “Not since you two taught him how to fight! My termen dare not even approach him. His roots spring up underfoot to coil and crush; his tendrils flail like whips; dead branches are wont to fall like the hammers of gods!”
“Good for him!” growled Eldin.
“But not,” she smiled beautifully, and yet hideously, “for you.”
At that moment a terman entered through the cabin door and bowed low. “Lathi,” he said in a curiously neutral voice, “they punish the horned ones.”
She turned her face to peer out of the large, open circular porthole beside her and beckoned to the termen holding the questers that they should bring the two closer. They were bundled forward until they crowded beside her, but still their view outside the ship was restricted. Lathi impatiently shook her head.
“I wish to see,” she snapped at one of the termen holding Hero. “And I wish our—guests—to see, so that they may know the severity of our punishments. Drone, get me up onto the deck at once.”
Hero thought to himself: “A neat trick if she can turn it,” and was immediately astonished by an abrupt and completely unexpected turn of neat trickery. For as the terman hauled on a large lever in the wall, so the “roof” of the cabin slid back and the entire room became a platform which creakingly elevated to the now open upper deck.
Lathi’s amazing paper ship had ascended somewhat and was now a hundred feet or so above Sarkomand’s ruins. A Lengite vessel was rising fast behind, her sails unfurling, and the questers could make out the figures of the furious Dukes of Isharra on her deck.
“They intend to take you back,” Lathi needlessly informed, “but they shall not have you.” She turned again to her termen. “Release them from their bindings—but do not take your eyes from them. They are treacherous! Strip the young one, for nakedness makes humans weak. As for the other: lash him to the mast … for the moment.”
Using their fingertips, which exuded a thin, melting fluid, the termen quickly cut the questers free of their cocoons. Numb and cramped, the pair stumbled a little as the termen continued to obey Lathi’s commands. Hero was quickly stripped of his clothes and Eldin was trussed up to the mainmast.
Now Lathi grabbed Hero’s arm and drew him onto the seat beside her. He shuddered at the contact and she smiled, relishing his horror. “Ah, David Hero, but you shall never know what you missed. And do you tremble? I agree, it is cold in the north. There—” and she held him close and threw the folds of her voluminous gown about him. Crushed to her more than ample and very beautiful bosom, Hero cringed inwardly at the thought of what lay behind and below: the monstrous pulsating grub which was Lathi’s lower body.
“Look!” she suddenly said, and turned his head toward a strange and cruel scene. “See, the Lengites punish their failed fellows. Oorn has ordered it. Her God-mate, Mnomquah, will suffer neither fools nor failures.”
Hero looked, but his concentration was elsewhere. Moving as gently and minutely as he could, he flexed his muscles here and there, unwinding his cramped, cold body and willing feeling back into his arms and legs. He had not realized how crushingly restrictive the paper bindings had been, but as blood began to flow again so he felt the sting of pins and needles in all his limbs.
The eyes of the termen were no longer upon him; all eyes were gazing at the tableau laid out in the ruins of central Sarkomand down below, where the Lengites were camped in strength. And as Lathi had directed, finally Hero too looked. The mist had cleared a little and the glow of the luridly racing clouds was sufficient to lend the scene a sort of foxfire luminosity.
Thronging horned ones were jeering and laughing, dancing obscenely around a pole or totem to which they had tied two of their own kind. But now Hero saw that this was neither pole nor totem but a shattered mast, and seeing the basket at its base he recognized the contraption as weird makeshift vessel which alone had escaped the wrecking of Hrill’s ship in the desert. The sail had been stripped away and a mass of flotation bags was now attached to the top of the mast, straining and threatening to bear the whole thing aloft. Several stout ropes anchored it to the ground.
“But what’s going on?” Hero asked, intrigued despite himself. “Surely those are the Lengites who forewarned of our coming, so enabling you to trap us? And talking of traps: just how was that done? Or was it really Ula and Una calling to us in the night?”
“Too many questions, David Hero,” she whispered in his ear. “Now be quiet and watch.” But as he opened his mouth to speak again she conceded an answer to at least one of his questions. “Yes, you are correct. They are the survivors of your desert attack upon the Leng ship—the last vestiges of a miserable failure. They failed to destroy Ilek-Vad—thanks to you.”
“But they are survivors,” Hero pointed out, frowning. “Survivors returned from a dangerous, however treacherous, mission—and by ingenious use of their wits, at that! They are my enemies, certainly—but they’re your allies. How can you punish what my kind would see as heroes?”
“That’s where you human beings fascinate me,” Lathi answered in a purr. “Your distorted sense of values, based on meaningless concepts like ‘Honor,’ ‘Heroism,’ and ‘Loyalty’—especially ‘Loyalty.’”
“Oh?” Hero argued. “And what of the loyalty of your termen?”
“The group instinct of the hive,” she shrugged. “Not loyalty at all, really. Survival. You would give your life for the Wanderer there. One terman would not give his for another, only for his Queen. On the contrary, another terman’s death would not concern him at all.”
“But—” Hero would have argued (at the sam
e time resting his eyes casually and fleetingly upon the loosely held, curving knife in the hand of the nearest terman).
“There are no buts,” she cut him short. “Do you think that the horned ones returned of their own free will? They did not. The wind brought them back here, Fate. They could not control their funny little vessel, that’s all, and one of the Lengite patrol ships saw them, intercepted and brought them down. They were hoping to reach Leng, where doubtless they would hide themselves away and disappear. Oh, yes, David Hero, for they knew well enough the price of failure.”
“The price of failure—” Hero mused, more to himself than to Lathi, as he weighed up his own chances. But perhaps she overheard him, or at least sensed his thoughts—and she saw his slitted eyes furtively casting about. Saw them pause, however briefly, once more upon the terman’s knife.
“You are a devious man, Hero of Dreams,” her purr deepened warningly. “When I might expect the hands of any other man to come a-fondling at my warm breasts—especially since they will be the last breasts to comfort you before you are folded to the cold and clammy bosom of Death herself—instead I discover your eyes upon a loosely-held weapon. You tremble not at my nearness or the desirability of my body, but at the contemplation of mad adventuring! Even now you seek your freedom, with enemies all around and escape utterly unthinkable. I begin to consider you a fool.”
“Am I a male spider then?” asked Hero. “Who loves his mate until she delivers the death-bite?” His mind worked overtime to seek a plausible excuse for his recalcitrance, his ingratitude, before Lathi should decide to make a quick end of her cat and mouse game; and out of the corner of his eye at last he glimpsed his salvation—
—The Leng ship under the command of the Dukes of Isharra, where it rose up silent as a ghost on the port side, its deck a mere leap away. “You would eventually kill me,” he gabbled, “whether I managed to grab your creature’s knife or not—but they would kill me right now, which makes it a matter of survival.” He freed an arm to point it at the Isharrans who came silently leaping between decks, their twin masters waving them in to the attack.