Haggopian and Other Stories (24 page)

“Ah! But that’s a poor man’s philosophy, Tarra Khash—the philosophy of defeat. For a poor man has nothing to lose, and what’s life itself but a burdensome, lingering thing? When a man becomes rich, however, his viewpoint changes. And the richer he becomes, the greater the change. Which tells you this: that since coming here I have grown rich. So rich that I am no longer willing to risk a fifty-fifty chance of hying myself to Chlangi all in one piece. Aye, for what’s wealth if you’re not alive to enjoy it?

“Wait!—let me say on. Now, I can see your first question writ clear across your face. It is this: how, by what means, have I, Hadj Dyzm, a poor man all my life, suddenly grown wealthy? Well, this much I’ll tell you—” He brought out a weighty saddlebag from beneath his robe, spread the hem of Tarra’s blanket over the smooth rock, tipped out contents of bag.

Tarra’s jaw dropped and his eyes opened wide, reflecting the glow and glitter and gleam of the heap of gold and jade and jewels which now lay scintillant in the fire’s flickering. And: “By all that’s—” he gasped, stretching forth a hand. But before his fingers could touch, Dyzm grasped them in his own wrinkled paw.

“Hold!” he cautioned again. “Wait! You have not heard all. This is but a twelfth part of it. Eleven more bags there are, where this one came from. Aye, and an hundred, a thousand times more where
they
came from!”

“Treasure trove!” Tarra hissed. “You’ve found a cache!”

“Shh!”
said Dyzm sharply. “A cache? A hoard? Treasure long lost and buried in the desert’s drifting sands?” Slowly he shook his head. “Nay, lad, more than that. I have discovered the tombs of a line of ancient kings, who in their time were wont to take with them to the grave all the treasures gathered up in all the days of their long, long lives!” And chuckling hoarsely, he patted Tarra’s knee through the blanket.

The tombs of kings! Treasures beyond avarice! Tarra’s head whirled with the sudden greed, the poisonous
lust
he felt pulsing in his veins—until a cooling breeze blew upon his brain from dark recesses of memory. In his mind’s eye he saw a huge slab of stone pivoting to block a portal, heard the shuddering reverberations as that massive door slammed immovably into place, felt the weight of a million tons of rock and sand pressing down on him, keeping him from the blessed air and light.

He drew back his hand and stopped licking his lips. His eyes narrowed and he stared hard at Hadj Dyzm.

The oldster gave a harsh, hoarse chuckle. “That’s a rare restraint you show, lad. Don’t you want to touch it?”

“Aye,” Tarra nodded. “Touch it? I’d like to wash my face in it!—but not until you’ve told me where it comes from.”

“Ho-ho!” cried Dyzm. “What? But we haven’t settled terms yet!”

Again Tarra nodded. “Well, since you’re so good at it, let’s hear what you’ve to say. What are your terms?”

Dyzm stroked his gnarly chin. “The way I see it, with you along especially in Chlangi my chances for survival go up from fifty-fifty to, oh, say three out of four?”

“Go on.”

“So let’s settle for that. For your protection I’ll pay you one fourth part of all I’ve got.”

Tarra sat back, frowned. “That doesn’t sound much of a partnership
to me.”

Dyzm chuckled, low and throaty. “Lad, these are early days. After all, we can only take so much with us—
this
time!”

Tarra began to understand. “As I prove myself—that is, as you continue to survive, which with my protection you will—so my percentage will improve; is that it?”

“Exactly! We’ll return—trip after trip until the vaults are emptied—by which time you’ll be earning a full half-share and there’ll be men enough in our employ to keep all the brigands in Theem’hdra at bay!”

“But where are these vaults you speak of?” Tarra asked, and got exactly the answer he’d expected.

“Man, if I told you that at this juncture…why, what need of me would you have then? Anyway, the vaults are impossible to find; I myself found them only by dint of sheerest accident. Aye, and I have sealed up the hole again, so that it’s now doubly impossible.”

Tarra grinned, however mirthlessly. “It would seem,” he said, “for all your high opinion of Hrossaks, that this one is only trustworthy up to a point!”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life,” Dyzm answered, “it’s this: that
all
men are trustworthy—up to a point.” He pointed at the fortune nestling in the corner of Tarra’s blanket, tossed down the saddlebag. “But keep them,” he said.”Why not? And take them up with you to your ledge to sleep the night, where a poor old lad with a pot belly and bandy legs can’t reach you and choke your life out in the dark. But don’t talk to me of trust and mistrust, Tarra Khash…”

Tarra reddened but said nothing. Truth to tell, old Dyzm’s arrow had struck home: the Hrossak
had
taken his precautions before sleeping, and he’d done a fair bit of suspicioning, too. (Only thank goodness the old fox hadn’t seen him following him, else were there a real tongue-lashing in the offing!)

At any rate Tarra said no more, nor old Dyzm, and after sitting awhile in silence they each began to make their arrangements for the night. The Hrossak found himself a smooth hollow in the stone close by—but far enough away from spouting water to be bone dry, and still retaining the sun’s heat—and there curled up in his blanket. Hadj Dyzm retired yawning to an arbor in the willows, rustling about a bit amongst the branches until settled. Only then, before sleeping, was there more talk, and brief at that:

“When do you want my answer?” Tarra softly called in the night.

“Tomorrow at latest—else by noon I move on alone. But for goodwill, if that’s what you seek, keep that saddlebag anyway—if only to remind you of a once-in-a-lifetime chance missed. You have a molehill; you could have a mountain.”

And on that they settled down, except…neither one slept.

III

For Tarra it was like this: the old man had seemingly dealt with him fairly, and yet still something—many things, perhaps—bothered him. The yellowish texture of Dyzm’s wrinkled skin, for instance, though why simple signs of age and infirmity should bother Tarra he couldn’t imagine. And the old boy’s voice, croaking like Khrissan crotala. A disease, maybe? His name, too: for “Hadj Dyzm” as name was more likely found attached to a man of cold Khrissa or Eyphra, and men of those parts rarely stray. They are rigidly cold, such men, brittle as the ice which winters down on them from the Great Ice Barrier and across the Chill Sea. And merchants they scarcely ever are, who by their natures are self-sufficient. And yet this one, at his time of life, alleged a longing for Klühn, city of sophisticates, warm in the winter and the temperate currents of the Eastern Ocean even as Khrissa in mid-summer. Or perhaps, weary of ice and frozen wastes, Dyzm would simply see out his life there, dotage-indulgent of luxuries and soft sea strands?

But what of the two who’d fled the beleaguered caravan with him? Old Dyzm had mentioned precious little of them, and had seemed to regret even that! Anyway, if he were so enamoured of Klühn (via Chlangi) why come this way around the southern tip of Lohmi’s mountains, in precisely the wrong direction in the first place?

Lastly, why show Tarra
any
of his treasure? Why not simply make him a decent offer for his assistance in crossing unscathed the badlands twixt here and Chlangi, and thence to Klühn? Surely that were wisest…

These were the thoughts which kept Tarra awake, but Hadj Dyzm’s were something else. For where the Hrossak’s were vague, curious, inquiring things, Dyzm’s were cunning-sharp and dire indeed. At any rate, he had not long settled before stirring, however furtively, and rising up in the night like a hunched blot on rocks white in the moonlight. Then, pausing only to listen to Tarra’s deep breathing and so ensure he slept (which still he did not, and which Dyzm knew well enough), the old man made his way up the terraces and quickly became one with the shadows.

Tarra watched him go through slitted eyes, then replaced his sword-stump in its scabbard, rose up and followed silently behind. And no hesitation this time, no feeling of guilt or question of “trust” to bother his mind. No, for his thoughts on Hadj Dyzm had commenced to come together, and the puzzle was beginning to take on form. How the last pieces of that puzzle would fall into place, Tarra could not yet say, but he had an idea that his immediate future—perhaps his entire future—might depend upon it.

Straight to the waterfall went Hadj Dyzm’s shadow in the night, with that of Hrossak fleeting not too far behind; so that this time Tarra saw the old man pass
behind
that shining spout of water, his back to the cliff, feet shuffling along a projecting ledge, and so out of sight. Tarra waited for long moments, but no sign of the oldster emerging from the other side. The Hrossak scratched impatiently at an itch on his shoulder, scuffed his feet and adjusted the scabbard across his back. Still no sign of Hadj.

Taking jewelled hilt of sword with its precious inches of steel in hand, finally Tarra ventured onto the ledge and behind the fall—and saw at once whereto the wily old tomb-looter had disappeared. Behind the fall, hollowed by water’s rush through untold centuries, a moist cavern reached back into forbidding gloom. But deep within was light, where a flickering torch sputtered in a bracket fixed to the wall. Tarra went to the torch and found others prepared where they lay in a dry niche. Taking one up and holding it to the flame until it caught sputtering life of its own, he followed a trail of footprints in the dust of the floor, moving ever deeper into the heart of the cliff. And always ahead a coil of blue smoke hanging in the musty air, by which he was doubly sure that Dyzm had passed this way.

Now the passage grew narrow, then wider; here it was high-ceilinged, there low; but as the light of the flambeau behind him grew fainter and fainter with distance, until a bend shut it off entirely, and as Tarra burrowed deeper and deeper, so he became aware of more than the work of nature here, where ever increasingly the walls were carved with gods and demons, with stalactites cut in the likenesses of kings and queens seated upon dripstone thrones. A gallery of the gods, this place—of an entire mythology long-forgotten, or almost forgotten—and of them that worshipped, or used to worship, the Beings of that paleogaean pantheon.

Tarra gave an involuntary shudder as he crept silently twixt grinning gargoyles and doomful demons, past looming, tentacled krakens and pschent-crowned, wide-mouthed
things
not so much men as long-headed lizards; and it was here, coming round a second bend in the passage and suddenly into a great terminal chamber, that he reached the very heart of this secret, once-sacred place.

Or was it the heart?

For here—where the ceiling reached up beyond the limits of torchlight, from which unsighted dome massy, morbidly carven daggers of rock depended, and where the stalagmites formed flattened pedestals now for teratological grotesques beyond the Hrossak’s staggered imagination—here the footprints in the dust led directly to a central area where blazed another faggot, this one thrust callously into the talon of a staring stone man-lizard. And at this idol’s clawed feet lay more bound bundles of dry wood, their knobs all coated with pitch.

Tarra lit a second torch and followed Dyzm’s trail a few paces more, to the exact center of the chamber. Which was where the trail ended—or rather, descended!

Between the twin stalagmite thrones of winged, tentacled krakens (images of loathly Lord Cthulhu, Tarra knew from olden legends of his homeland) steps cut from the very rock commenced what seemed a dizzy spiral dive into unknown bowels of earth. And up from that yawning pit came the reek of Dyzm’s torch, and from vaults unguessed came clatter of pebbles inadvertently dislodged.

Now Tarra knew at this stage that he had come far enough. He felt it in his water: common sense advising that he now retrace his steps. But to what end? No use now to plead ignorance of the oldster’s secret, for certes Dyzm would note the absence or use of two of his tarry torches. And anyway, ’twas curiosity had led the Hrossak on, not greed for more than he’d been offered. In no way did he wish any harm upon the other (not at this stage of the adventure, anyway), but by the same token he saw no good reason why he should remain, as it were, in the dark in respect of the subterranean treasure vaults. Also he desired to know why, in the dead of night, any man should require to venture down into this place. What was it that lured the oldster? More treasure? But surely there would be time enough for that later? Alas, Tarra failed to take into account the greed of some men, which is limitless. To them those fabulous regions “Beyond the Dreams of Avarice” do not exist!

And so he set foot upon the first step, then the second, and by yellow light of flaring brand descended but not very far. At the end of a single steep twist the corkscrew ended in a smaller chamber, where once again two stony sons of Cthulhu sat facing each other this time across a circular shaft whose sides fell smooth and sheer into darkness. And here, too, some curious machinery: a drum of rope with pulleys, a winding handle and large copper bucket, all made fast to the weighty pedestal of one of the Cthulhu images. And tied to the other pedestal, a rope ladder whose rungs went down into gloom. Tarra peered over the rim and saw down there at some indeterminate depth the flickering light of Hadj Dyzm’s torch.

Now the Hrossak examined the rope ladder more carefully, and satisfied himself that it was made of pretty stout stuff. Seating himself on the rim of the shaft, he leaned his weight on the ladder’s rungs and they supported him effortlessly. He began to lower himself and paused.

Again that niggling mini-Tarra, the one that dwelled in the back of his mind, was whispering cautionary things to him. But cautioning of what? If an old man dared venture here at this hour, surely there could be little of any real danger here? Tarra silenced the frantic whisperer in his head and peered about.

Seated there at pit’s rim, he aimed his torch in all directions. There were unexplored niches and recesses in the walls here, true, and also he had this sensation of hooded eyes, of something watching. But how possibly? By whom, watched? These stony idols, perhaps! And Tarra snorted his abrupt dismissal of the idea. At any rate, Hadj Dyzm was below, as witness the flare of his torch. Ah, well, only one thing for it—