Night Winds (9 page)

"Hal Sabretooth!" roared Dwassllir, scooping up a broken section of stalactite. A growl answered him from the cavern's echoing recesses. "Sabretooth! Do you know me? My ancestors were your enemy! We fought your forebears in ages past and made necklaces for our women from your pretty fangs! Hear me, sabretooth! Though you're three times the size of your tawny ancestor, I've no fear of you! I am Dwassllir, last true son of the old kings! I've come for my crown! Hide in your hole, sabretooth--or I'll have a white fur cloak to wear with my royal crown!"

The giant's challenge echoed through the cavern, rolled back by the sabretooth's angry snarl. Somewhere in the shadows the cat paced stiff-legged, but the cacophony of echoes made its position uncertain. Bats swooped in panic; dust and bits of stone trickled over them. Kane shifted his sword uneasily, not caring to think what silent blow might strike back.

"King Brotemllain! The legends of my race do not lie!" breathed Dwassllir in awe. Reverently he stood before the throne of the ages-dead hero, his face aglow with visions of ancient glory. Reflected in his eyes was crimson brightness from the ruby crown.

The giant discarded his stalactite club, and stretched to touch the dead king's crown. With gentle strength he broke it free from its encrusted setting. "Grandsire, your children have need of this..."

An avalanche of ivory-fanged terror, the sabretooth bolted from the darkness. Shattering silence with its killing scream, it leaped for the giant's unprotected back. Off guard, Dwassllir pivoted at the final instant to half evade the cat's full rush. Its crushing impact hurled giant and cave beast against the throne and onto the cavern floor.

Jaws locked in Dwassllir's shoulder, the tiger raked furiously against his back, talons tearing deep gashes. Kane limped in, sword flashing. But his movements were clumsy, and at first slash a blow of the creature's paw spun him away. He fell heavily at the foot of the throne and shook his head dully to clear his vision.

Dwassllir howled and lurched to his knees, huge hands clawing desperately to dislodge the murderous fangs. His flailing arm touched the fallen torch and he seized it instantly, smashing its blazing end into the monster's face. Seared by the blinding heat, the sabretooth released its death grip with an enraged shriek, and the giant's punishing kick flung them apart.

Smoke hung over the cat's gory maw. Gouts of scarlet spurted from the giant's deeply gouged shoulder. "Face to face, sabretooth!" roared Dwassllir wildly. "Skulker in shadow! Slinking coward! Dare now to attack your master face to face!"

Even as the tiger crouched to spring, Dwassllir leaped upon it, crippled left arm brandishing the torch. They grappled in midair, and the cavern seemed to quake at their collision. Over and over they rolled, torch flung wide, while Kane groggily tried to regain his feet. The giant struggled grimly to stave off those awful fangs, to writhe atop the sabretooth's greater bulk. Fearsome jaws champed on emptiness as they fought, but its slashing claws were goring horrible wounds through the giant's flesh.

Stoically enduring the agony, Dwassllir threw all his leviathan strength into tightening his grip on the cat's head. He bellowed insanely--curses of pain, of fury--locked his teeth in the beast's ear and ripped away its stump with taunting laughter. Life blood poured over his limbs, made a slippery mat of scarlet-sodden white fur. Still he howled and jeered, chanted snatches of ancient verse--sagas of his race--and pounded the sabretooth's skull against stone.

With a sudden wrench, Dwassllir hauled himself astride the cat's back. "Now die, sabretooth!" he roared. "Die knowing defeat as did your scrawny grandsires!"

He dug his knees into the creature's ribs and clamped heels together beneath its belly. The cat tried to roll, to dislodge him, but it could not. Great fists knotted over frothed fangs, arms locked champing jaws apart; Dwassllir bunched his shoulders and heaved backward. Gasping, coughing breath snorted from the cat's nostrils; its struggle was no longer to attack. For the first time in centuries, a sabretooth knew fear.

Blood gleamed a rippling pattern across the straining muscles of the giant's broad back. Irresistibly his hold tightened. Inexorably the tiger's spine bowed backward. An abrupt, explosive snap as vertebrae and sinew surrendered.

Laughing, Dwassllir twisted the sabretooth's head completely around. He spat into its dying eyes.

"Now then, King Brotemllain's crown!" he gasped, and staggered away from the twitching body. The giant reeled, but stood erect. His fur garments were shredded, dark and sticky. Blood flowed so freely as to shroud the depth and extent of his wounds; flaps of flesh hung ragged, and bone glistened yellow as he moved.

He groaned as he reached the throne and slumped down with his back braced against it. Kane found his senses clear enough to stand and knelt beside the stricken giant. Deftly his hands explored the other's wounds, sought vainly to stanch the bright spurting blood from the sabre gouges. But Kane was veteran of too many battles not to know his wounds were mortal.

Dwassllir grinned gamely, his face pale beneath splashed gore. "That, Kane, is how my ancestors overcame the great beasts of Earth's dawn."

"No giant ever fought a creature like this," Kane swore, "nor killed it bare-handed!"

The giant shrugged weakly. "You think not, manling? But you don't know the legends of our race, Kane. And the legends are truth, I know that now! Fire and Ice! Those were heroic days!"

Kane looked about the cavern, then bent to retrieve a fallen circle of gold. The rubies gleamed like Dwassllir's life blood; the crown was heavy in his hands. And though there was a fortune in his grasp, Kane no longer wanted King Brotemllain's crown.

"This is yours now," he muttered, and placed the crown upon Dwassllir's nodding brow.

The giant's head came erect again, and there was fierce pride in his face--and sadness. "I might have led them back to those lost days of glory!" he whispered. Then: "But there'll be another of my race, perhaps--another who will share my vision of the great age!"

He signed for Kane to leave him. Already his eyes looked upon things beyond this lonely cavern in a desolate waste. "That was an age to live in!" he breathed hoarsely. "An age of heroesl"

Kane somberly rose to his feet. "A great race, a heroic age--it's true," he acknowledged softly. "But I think the last of its heroes has passed."

Lightning colors, whining, whirling dirge of sonic pain, coalesced to ecstasy. More dimly now, the tones muted, submerged. Form returned, images of imprisoned light. Scintillant shapes that shimmered with the siren melody, colors of piercing brilliance, sparkles of sound shivering through his senses. Lancinations of unendurable ecstasy ravened through his consciousness, starbursts of warring sensory impulses that slipped once more to coherent phenomena, an instant before his mind shattered to follow into final chaos.

Lustrous figures of nude beauty formed pirouetting patterns of dazzling perfection. For a timeless space he marveled upon their kaleidoscopic resplendency, his consciousness merged within the coruscant mosaic of their dance. Their dance, the beauty of their dance... soulwrenching wonder that staved off the shrill voices of pain, of terror that yammered upon the fringes of his awareness. An infinity of goddesses--or numberless images of a goddess--weaving through the glacial mists of throbbing color.

Now he understood that they were but infinite reflections of the one goddess--the goddess of beauty, shimmering upon all the mirrors of the cosmos. He desired to behold the true image of this beauty, and his spirit soared through the swirling patterns, in search of the one true image. Time elapsed. Like a mote of interstellar debris drawn by the compellent attraction of a dark star, he fell unerringly toward the central focus of the ceaseless shifting labyrinth.

At the heart of the vortex of pulsing color his quest was ended. Over the true image of beauty his awareness descended. He gazed upon the glowing porcelain of the goddess's perfect flesh, creamy majesty of unblemished form that radiated a warm luster of indescribable color. Her breasts were cones of floral delicacy, her hips dark with mystery, her limbs soft witchery as she pirouetted through the whirling dance. She saw him. The fierce welcome of her scarlet smile, the burning summons of her violet eyes invited him to share her dance.

The chords of needle-pain color roiled about them as they spun, wove shards of light into feather-mounds of song. She fell back upon the waving softness of fern patterns, opened to him her arms and red lips. As he drifted to her embrace, he marveled endlessly over the radiant perfection of line, the living fire of her flesh, sorcerous porcelain of warmth and velvet.

Her smile changed, shadowed in pain... or cruelty. Her breasts heaved with the pulse of her heart, her chest shuddered from the exertion of her breath. Her creamy torso split apart along midline; the ribs sprang outward, like spreading carpels of a blossom, beckoned in the breeze of sound. Explosive color washed over her altered form; her slender, unjointed arms waved for him like filaments of some obscenely tempting orchid. The smile broadened, and an impossible length of curling scarlet tongue licked toward his throat. Vibrations of perfumed anguish engulfed him. In sudden terror he struggled against her embrace, buffeted the enfolding, smothering petals. Her claws tore at his face, the needle tongue stabbed for his throat as he seized her boneless neck in a stranglehold, fought desperately to keep from merging with the vampirish ecstasy of death...

The dream abruptly dissolved.

Blood trickling from the gouges of her nails, Opyros stared numbly at the limp form whose throat he gripped. Dully he released his fingers, one by one. Ceteol's mottled face flushed as breath whistled past her bruised lips. Her heart was strong beneath Opyros's palm, although she showed no sign yet of recovering consciousness. Vaguely relieved that he had not killed the girl, Opyros carelessly draped the bed robes over her still form and rose to find his clothing. The room shimmered through drug-mists of ghost image--from each whorl of the dark oak paneling leered a face--so that he rested a moment on the edge of the bed until his head cleared and his long legs felt stronger.

The temper of his present mistress was difficult to foresee. Best to leave before she awoke, the young nobleman reflected. The touch of his garments was strange to his fingers; after drawing pants and loose shirt over his bony frame, he despaired of his sandals and left the chamber barefoot. The evening was warm, though he was uncertain which evening it was. This new drug had left his mouth dry and foul, his mind a burned-over forest of half-consumed and heat-corroded shapes. For this, ale and diversion...

The rambling townhouse lay silent and empty as he padded through it. His servants--had he given them the night off? Too many gaps in his memory--perhaps he would remember later. Retrieving a folder of unbound parchment from the litter of his study, Opyros the poet stumbled from his manor and drifted through the shadows of Enseljos in search of Kane.

Greasy light oozed onto the damp pavement from the doorway of Stanchek's Tavern and cast puddles of smoky yellow through the tattered leather curtain. The colors still danced before his eyes, as Opyros stepped over dark pockmarks in the broken paving, uncertain about the faces which peered back at him from the pools of black water. It had rained sometime not long before, though the night above Enseljos's sprawling skyline was clear, as had been the autumn morning when he and Ceteol had dissolved a few grains of the new drug in a flagon of wine. Presumably this was the same day, since there was only a vague hint of hunger.

A snarl of challenge came from the black alley adjoining the tavern, and he heard the rasp of unseen steel. Swinging the folio up like a shield, Opyros groped for the knife at his belt. But a second shape stirred in the darkness and growled, "Forget him, Hef! Don't you recognize the mad poet?" I

Opyros sidled past the alleyway, wondering whether he had been accosted by thieves or guards. Evidently this Hef was a stranger, since the poet made frequent visits to Stanchek's Tavern. No sign marked the murky doorway, nor had the place any name other than Stanchek's, after the limping ex-mercenary who owned it. But the tavern was well known to the sort who gathered there, for Stanchek's was a dive of evil reputation even in the brawling turmoil of Enseljos. The city guard did not patrol this, the oldest section of Enseljos; a monthly donation to its commander convinced him that it was a unwarranted risk of his men to send them into the iniquitous slum where truly no man of honest intentions would venture. Law-abiding folk had their inns an taverns, and the growing ranks of Halbros-Serrantho's soldiery--even his hot-tempered mercenaries--tended frequent the less forbidding places of amusement: the Red Bear, the Hanging Bandit, the Hound and Leopard, the Bad Dog, or even the Yardarm. To Stanchek gathered the night creatures of Enseljos's underworld and others whose role in life was less evident but similarly dubious achievement.

The folio snared a tattered fold as Opyros pushed through the grimy curtain, and he maintained his ho clumsily. Threescore pairs of eyes looked toward h rattling entry, considered him briefly, and returned to other matters. The poet padded down the low flight worn stone steps that lapped like waves of poured honey in a crescent past the doorway to the room below. Once the townhouse of a wealthy merchant, Stanchek's displayed the sunken central room with high vaulted ceiling and horseshoe gallery of another age's architecture. Only in places across the floor could the original tiles glimpsed, effaced and filthy, and ungainly pillars of mismatched construction shored up the sagging galleries. Doorways opened onto rooms from off the gallery, or led into cellars that ran like interconnected burrows beneath the tavern and surrounding buildings, blocked (supposedly) by rubble in back, where the main living quarters lay in toppled ruin. Business of a less open nature was conducted in these dim chambers, and although he believed he had visited them all, Opyros was now sorry to know that his search would not lead him in these warrens tonight.