Iced On Aran (28 page)

Authors: Brian Lumley

BOOK: Iced On Aran

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A fishy belly offered itself, and Hero obligingly sliced it open. Fish guts stained the water red and yellow, webbed hands scrabbling desperately. Eldin cut his creature gill to gill, scared off the female with a lunge of his grisly knife. Then the Wanderer looked around, sought Hero.

Hero!

The younger quester was just about all in. His feet kickedâor more nearly twitchedâvery feebly as he drifted surfaceward, his head tilted back and glassy eyes gazing straight up. And this time he wasn't faking it. Eldin drove his great legs as never before, grabbed Hero's hair in passing, hauled him along behind.

And looking down worriedly on Hero as he blazed for the surface, Eldin could also see into the deeps beneathâcould see the horde of gill-beings even now speeding in his wake!

The surface, the blessed surface! Eldin's head broke through in glittering droplets, and a moment later
Hero's. Then the younger man was drawing air with a noise like badly-holed bellows, and Eldin scrambling aboard their vessel, crying: “Up, quick! Come on, climb up! Give me your hand, I tell you!”

But Hero simply floating on his back, too exhausted even to struggle. Eldin flinging himself on the deck face-down, grabbing Hero under the arms and hauling him unceremoniously aboard.

“Don'tâ
gasp!
âinterrupt meâ
gasp!
âwhen I'm breathing!” Hero complained, flopping there while Eldin thundered headlong into the cabin. A moment later came the throb of
Quester
's flotation engine at full throttle, then Eldin storming up again on to the deck.

Hero propped himself up on one elbow. “Knackered!” he coughed, by way of explaining his inactivity.

Scaly heads broke the surface close to
Quester
; webbed hands came up over her sides; Hero was on his feet in a trice. “But not that knackered!” he gasped.

And of course, the rest of it is known.

The surface was pink where severed fingers and hands, even a fishy head or two, floated in profusion, when at last
Quester
cleared the water and drifted skyward; and only then dared the pair put down their swords and rest. After that:

A storm came up out of nowhere (conjured, perhaps, by the thwarted gods of the submarine temple?) that blew
Quester
across the sky like a tuft of thistledown. But battened in the cabin Hero and Eldin didn't give a damn between them. “Few reefs up here to strike against,” the Wanderer commented, sinking muth straight from the bottle.

“I say top the bags brim-full,” Hero nodded, shivering, not quite fully recovered. “Let's climb clear of the storm and only come down again when it's blown itself out. It's a mite cold up there, but safe as safe can be!”

“Agreed!” said Eldin, turning the pumps up full. “As for getting cold: why, there's booze enough in store to keep us warm for a week, even in upper atmosphere!”

And as the dreamlands fell away beneath their keel, so the adventurers started in on one of their very best binges.

THE END

But there are more dreamquests in store!

Look for these Tor books by Brian Lumley

The DREAMLANDS series
Hero of Dreams
Ship of Dreams
Mad Moon of Dreams
Iced on Aran

The PSYCHOMECH series
Psychomech
Psychosphere
Psychamok

The NECROSCOPE series
Necroscope
Vamphyri!
The Source
Deadspeak
Deadspawn

Demogorgon
The House of Doors

Blood Brothers
Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi
The Last Aerie

The Vampire Wakes

The seven stone coffins stood upright in a half-circle, with that of the Black Princess in the center of the row, flanked by her six warriors. Weird, black wine now gushed over the open sarcophagi, drenching the shrunken mummies within.

The watchers' eyes were fixed fearfully upon the gaunt figure of the Black Princess, where her coffin faced the reopened passage to the outside world. And all saw
her
eyes crack open! Petrified, the entire assembly stared into the pits of burning sulphur which were Yath-Lhi's eyes.

The wine shone like oil on her wrinkled limbs. And like oil it eased those wrinkles, soaked into and made soft the leather of her flesh. Her yellow eyes opened wider and her lips cracked apart in a hideous grin. Creaking like rusted hinges,
she stepped forth out of her coffin
!

The Black Princess beckoned with a still-stiff arm, and a man stepped forward, zombie-like, to stand before her. She reached out her hands and touched him, all ten of her fingers, widespread, contacting his shouldersâand the man began to twitch and flop like a strangled chicken. He did not scream, made no attempts at flight, merely jerked and throbbed and fluttered; he withered, deflated, and became a bag of bones in Yath-Lhi's sucking hands.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

ICED ON ARAN

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10010

TorÂ® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Cover art by Tim Jacobus

eISBN 9781466818675

First eBook Edition : April 2012

ISBN: 0-812-52422-5

First Tor mass market printing: March 1994