The Pandahem Cycle II

“Green Shadows”In their engaging way the Star Lords hurled me headlong into rip-roaring, blood-pulsing adventure stark naked and unarmed—and, as well as adventure, into diabolical situations where I could get myself killed with spine-shattering ease. Like now. The situation into which I tumbled was clear, simple and deadly. The Everoinye sent their phantom Blue Scorpion, all gigantic and glowing, to snatch me up from home in Esser Rarioch. They dumped me down here where squamous monsters with fangs and exceedingly sharp claws sought to rip me up for a light snack. In a gravel-floored cavern lit by pale phosphorescent fires I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and Kregen, had to be about my business with sharp promptitude. “Be quick! Or we’re all dead!” The woman crouching against the cave wall shrieked it out. The two men with her just screamed. On the gravel a few paces off lay a harness of plate armor. From its breaths and sights flowed a greens ichor. The cavern stank with the throat-clogging odor of rotting flesh. In the visor an Acid-Head Gimlet stuck fast. The gauzy wings of the dragonfly killer shimmering with pseudo-life reflected for a ghostly moment in the blade of the sword as it tumbled from a lax gauntlet onto the gravel. Time only to feel a heartbeat of sorrow for the poor devil who’d worn the plate—a gloating hissing and movement against the cavern’s oppressive radiance snatched my attention. In the mouth of the tunnel ahead bulked the monstrous shape of a reptile-man, and from his green-taloned hand a second Acid-Head Gimlet flew. The wings glimmered in the phosphorescent light. The gimlet head glistened with the acid that would melt me down to the soles of my naked feet. No time to do anything but dive forward in a desperate try for the sword fallen from the armor’s open gauntlet... My fingers touched the hilt, knocked it a handsbreadth across the floor. No time now to curse, to do anything but scrabble forward, seize the sword and flick it up in the way the Krozair Disciplines taught. The Acid-Head Gimlet bounced against the blade, caromed off and smashed his deadly head against the rock wall. The reptilian monster-man charged. He was not as deadly as his pets. His sword, a huge and ponderous affair, swung up as I slipped on loose gravel. The blade sliced down like a sickle of the Reapers of Men. A roll saved me so that I could hurl myself up and snout my borrowed weapon forward. The sword was a serviceable cut and thruster, a thraxter of Havilfar, so I gripped the hilt in both hands and drove straight on. The blade slid in and in. After a few moments in which I felt the sensations of a man trapped in a whirlwind, his convulsions ceased. An old fighting man and leem-hunter does not wait around after a single combat. There would be plenty more monsters in this labyrinth and although I bore them no ill will I fully intended to do my best to keep my head on my shoulders, oh, yes, by Krun! Instantly, all a part of the same movement, I leaped away to the side, slimed blade up ready for the next one who came howling from the tunnel. This one tried to be clever and attempted to use a technique old when men fought with flint weapons. He went down and the rest fled. The woman said: “Hai, Jikai!” By the disgusting and putrid eyeballs of Makki Grodno! I shook my head and looked at the tumbled—and infinitely pathetic—heap of armor. “A small jikai, perhaps.” I said, for that word denoting a truly tremendous, heroic deed, seemed out of place in this depressing cavern of blue phosphorescence and shadows and dead men. The poor devil of a Chulik had not been altogether clever wearing plate armor down here. Despite his fanatical training from birth in the arts of combat, he’d just been too slow to dodge. She saw my glance. “He was our champion, Nas Chendo, to whom we paid much gold to protect us.” “Let us not,” said the full-fleshed man whose veined face shone blotchily red and green, sweating, “speak ill of the dead.” He was dressed in dark practical leathers which, to my eyes, did not suit him. He was more of your sumptuous clothes man, used to dealing in the good things of life, a Merchant Adventurer, I guessed. The broken ends of his purse chains showed that down here in the Moder his merchanting had gone as badly as his adventuring. The second man stared fixedly at me with his slanted, round slit eyes, yellow and bold. “Where did you come from jikai?” Now, when you deal with sorcerers and folk of that uncanny ilk, it’s best to be extremely wary. These people were venturing into the mysteries and terrors of a Moder in search of loot and magics. They’d know damn well I hadn’t been with them in their party when they’d started. I used a facile excuse. The effect of the horrors employed to guard the tombs and the treasures within a Moder in Moderdrin, the Humped Land, situated in the centre of Havilfar, is to shred away disbelief in the strange. “I’ve been wandering about down here—Havil alone knows how long—lost all my belongings—I’m very pleased to see you. Where is the rest of your party?” For a moment I thought the sorcerer might not accept this explanation. His cat-face, with the arrogant whiskers and slanted feline eyes, regarded me fixedly. He was, I saw, a Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis, clad in splendid vestments of silk, richly decorated with gold thread. He was of the lordly ones of the shadow realms, who commanded, who wielded enormous but subtle powers. From his belt dangled gold chains. His beringed fingers touched his lips and those slit eyes stared on me, saw my naked body, the slimed sword—and this powerful man licked his lips and stumbled over what he would say. “We have been separated—we are lost—and Nas Chendo—” “But now we have a new champion!” The woman’s voice rippled lightly in the cavern. I detected an incongruous note of amusement in her tones. The man in dark leathers who had some respect for the dead spoke in a voice that would, in other circumstances, have been fruity. “Llahal and Lahal, jikai. This is the Lady Shamsi and this is San Ferald. I am Nath Jadrelgen ti Riptanporth.” “Llahal and Lahal. I am called Jak ti Tamlin.” That was enough for now. Jak is a name I use often. Tamlin is a charming little village on the island of Veliadrin. Dray Prescot’s name is not unknown upon Kregen, what with all the stories and plays and puppet shows, and these people would scarcely be surprised to run across him all naked and unexpectedly. And so, I looked more closely upon this Lady Shamsi. Her appearance was surprising on a number of counts, one of which was not so much the color of her hair, a deep and lustrous green, as why she had chosen to dye it that color at all. Her features were regular and decided. Her face was white. One hears of white faces; hers might have come freshly from the flour bag. Inevitably, her eyes were green and the heavy eyeshadow a subtle variation of the same color. Her mouth was red, and a white tooth showed a tip just indenting her lower lip. Some folk find that no blemish but an added attraction in a pretty woman’s face. She wore a white thigh-length tunic with a shimmery green undersurface, and black tall-boots with tops of lizard skin, gold buckled. Her waist and arms were cinctured by gold bands. From time to time she spoke softly to the clinging creature perched on her left shoulder, a hairy, bright-faced little monkey with great intelligence in his round puzzled eyes... Around his neck an emerald green, brass-studded collar, such as the chavniks of Hyrklana wear, was missing three of the flower-stamped, pseudo-golden studs. The chain attached to the collar chingled with the soft, luxurious sound of solid gold. Mili-milus, the Kregans call these friendly monkey-like creatures, and savants argue heatedly over whether their chittery sounds constitute a language, and if, in consideration of their well-proven emotional attachments, they might be considered as human beings. This russet-haired mili-milu made no sound, squatting on the white and green shoulder of the Lady Shamsi. She reached up her hand covered by a glove very similar to the thickly-padded glove a falconer wears and stroked the hairy fellow. Around her neck and loosely fastened by a turquoise-headed stick pin she wore a red scarf. This she now unwound, replacing the stick pin in her tunic, and handed to me. I gave her thanks and wound the scarf around me and hauled the end up between my legs. The scarf was not, unfortunately, scarlet. The poor dead Chulik’s armor yielded a broad belt with broken lockets — the scabbard was missing — and this I fastened around me. With the thraxter in my fist I went forward and took my place before the others as we left that cavern reeking of death. One of these three people was the reason the Star Lords had pitched me headlong down here. One of them had to be protected. Which one? I did not know. Perhaps all three? That made no difference. I needed to protect them all from the eerie perils lurking in the unplumbed depths of the Moder. Clad only in a scarlet breechclout and wielding a Great Krozair Longsword, I, Dray Prescot, Vovedeer, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, have fronted many dire perils on Kregen. Oh, yes, that wonderful and terrible, beautiful and savage planet four hundred light years from the world of my birth has afforded me great hardship and dangers aplenty, and, also, the most marvelous of joys. Now, with only a thraxter to match the red scarf I would have to do what I could. Yes, by Zim-Zair! With the return of color to his cheeks, Nath Jadrelgen took on some of the self-importance natural to him. He glared at the Fristle Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis. “Why did you not cast a spell, San Ferald? Havil knows, the situation was desperate enough.” The wizard was still gripped by fear. With a despairing gesture he lifted the broken ends of the chains on his belt. “When we fell through that misbegotten trap I lost my Book—” “As I lost my purse,” said Jadrelgen with great malignity. Then what the sorcerer was saying struck home. “You mean you cannot cast any magics, here in this dreadful place?” “I tried to memorize some of the various arts — but the Book — it never leaves me — it is my life — it is more than my life—” I said: “We must push on if we are to rejoin your party. San Ferald, as we go perhaps you might try to recall a useful spell or two you have in your head.” The Lady Shamsi laughed. The tiny mili-milu jumped. Ahead, the rock corridor stretched unbroken to double doors at the end. We proceeded cautiously, probing and looking. San Ferald, with some hesitancy, said: “I think... Yes! I can recall exactly Sheomanar the Mad’s favorite casting. The Sleety Tomb!” In a shrill and near-breaking scream, the Lady Shamsi cried: “Then you must use it now!” Her voice broke into a babble of prayer and her hand pointed starkly down the corridor. I stared and, for an instant, could see nothing to warrant alarm. Then a vicious horde of winged creatures broke from the walls, buzzing, and stormed towards us. “Fliktitors!” shrieked Jadelgren, collapsing backwards. Squamous, buzzing on glistening wings, with fangs and claws that would strip us to the bone, the Fliktitors swooped. Not one was larger than a terrestrial domestic cat. San Ferald took a sliver of crystal from his pouch and grasped it pointing at the multitude of little horrors. He started to declaim. Like a scything blizzard sweeping across the Ice Floes, the Fliktitors swarmed upon us, screeching. Perforce, I set myself with the single sword to do what I could against them. We would have been totally overwhelmed, there was no doubt of that, by the ponderous thighs and mountainous hips of the Divine Madam of Belschutz! From the Sorcerer’s outstretched shard of crystal, a sleeting storm of ice spread in a glistening cone. Each barbed and fanged horror was encased. Each one fell to the floor numbed and prisoned in a miniature example of Sheomanar the Mad’s favorite casting—The Sleety Tomb.