Bloodstone (5 page)

"I've read Alorri-Zrokros," Kane stated. "I know his book well, and I respect the ancient wisdom he unveils in those pages. Knowledge is a tool--black knowledge a dangerous tool, but nonetheless a source of power; to him who uses it with care."

Kane paused, seemingly in thought. Dribeck stared at him, awe-stricken interest in his gaze. A dozen wild speculations tumbled through his brain. He did not doubt Kane's assertion. Somehow no wonder seemed beyond the stranger's power to unfold.

"I read in the Book of the Elders of an elder race called the Krelran," Kane continued, "and of their ruined city which is known to man as Arellarti."

And suddenly Dribeck felt that the afternoon had been drained of its warmth and familiar laughter. There was no physical change. Just that a subtle and smothering veil seemed to separate them from the sunlight, from the human carousal, from the buoyant well-being he had known a moment ago. Annoyed at his sudden chill, he tried without success to dismiss it with a mental shrug. Unaccountably, Dribeck noticed for the first time the bizarre ring Kane wore loosely on his left hand--a bloodstone massive even against that outsize fist.

"What did the wizard have to say of Arellarti?" asked Dribeck uneasily.

"Much that would interest you--considering Selonari's proximity to the ruins. The Krelran were an enigma even among the mysterious elder races of prehuman Earth. Alorri-Zrokros has very little to disclose of their origins, their civilization, their position in the dawn world. They were not native to Earth--like others of that time, they came from beyond the stars--where, how, why is not known. The Krelran were few in number; so far as man has discovered, they built only one city, Arellarti. The ancient seas cut deep into the Southern Lands then, and Arellarti stood upon an island of a great inland bay. Alorri-Zrokros describes it as a wondrous and imposing citadel, standing only for a short time before its fall.

"For the Krelran found the ancient Earth a hostile world. Even in their solitude they became embroiled in the wars of the elder races. They defended their city well with their strange weapons; the alien science that had carried them from beyond the stars harnessed for them energies beyond human imagination. Great as their strength must have been, their enemies were more powerful. Arellarti was destroyed within its first century-by the Scylredi, Alorri-Zrokros postulates. The Krelran never recovered; their few survivors lived as savages in the shelter of the forested shore. The ancient sea receded until Arellarti was a lost island in a vast salt marsh, called today Kranor-Rill. Still skulking within the swamp and its vine-hidden ruins are the degenerate remnants of the Krelran race... the bestial anthropoid slime-dwellers you call Rillyti."

Dribeck rocked back on the beer keg, rubbing his palms across his knees. "Not all of what you tell me is new to us in Selonari," he pointed out. "The borders of Kranor-Rill are only a long day's ride from our walls, on the southern edge of our holdings. Though my people are not versed in the legends of the elder races, we know the Rillyti. Savage monsters--stand taller than a man, but their bodies are amphibian--heads like toads. They're semi-intelligent--fight with forged weapons, have a language of sorts. Dangerous beasts--but fortunately it's rare for one to stray from the confines of their swamp. And Kranor-Rill they're welcome to! As treacherous a tangle of slime and mud, vines and cypress, insects and vermin as ever defiled good land. The swamp is virtually impenetrable, and not far from its southern limits the Cold Forests begin. So there's not even a good reason for traveling around Kranor-Rill.

"As to Arellarti, our legends tell various stories of a lost city that lies in ruins within Kranor-Rill. And it's told that the city was built long ago by the Rillyti, that they still use its fallen structures as a temple for their obscene rituals. They do creep forth on occasion and steal a girl from one of the outlying farms. Few men have braved the swamp and its ugly guardians to seek out Kranor-Rill's lost city; fewer still have returned to describe their adventure. Some men claim to have glimpsed Arellarti; their tales range from its being a shining city of gold to nothing more than a vine-choked jumble of broken stone.

"So Kranor-Rill is a stinking quicksand pesthole that wise men avoid. The Rillyti are dangerous but rarely seen, since they shun the dry forestlands. Not even worth exterminating--if that were feasible. Wolves, panthers... these are the real dangers to those who live beyond the walls.

"Well, your account of Arellarti's forgotten past is intriguing, Kane. Perhaps, then, there's substance to the sinister and unsettling legends of Kranor-Rill. At any rate, you give a certain aura of ancient grandeur to that ill-famed region and its repulsive inhabitants. But just what significance do you attach to this? What bearing does prehuman history have on my present state of affairs?"

Kane inspected his empty mug and answered in a lowered voice, "Perhaps a great deal. We know that Arellarti was the fortress of an advanced civilization. The weapons of the Krelran were deadly beyond human conception. Now, suppose you had access to such power... imagine that Krelran weaponry were available to your army!"

"Absurd!" Dribeck commented, though his face showed interest. "Whatever weapons the Krelran commanded are age-old heaps of corrosion and dust by now."

"I'm not so certain," Kane went on. "Alorri-Zrokros hints that much of Krelran science lies preserved in Arellarti's ruins--that their most potent weapon was spared in the city's fall! The elder races controlled secrets of unfathomable mysteries, of incalculable powers! Is it so impossible, therefore, that some of their creations might have resisted the breath of time--might there not still exist some few artifacts of Krelran science that only await the touch of intelligence to be reactivated? I tell you, Lord Dribeck, I have spent years studying the great works of Carsultyal, and of other learned minds! I'm not only convinced that certain Krelran weapons survive in Arellarti, but I'm certain I can discover the secrets of their operation!"

"The odds are formidable on either assertion," reflected Dribeck, now plainly intrigued by Kane's argument.

"But the stakes are more than high enough to justify the attempt. If I can uncover just a few of their weapons... if I can reactivate only some minor portion of their ancient power... think of the value this would be to your army. The prestige, the fear of an unknown power! It would assure your leadership of Selonari--and Malchion would think long before risking his troops against such a force!"

"Arellarti is well guarded against intrusion these days," Dribeck pointed out, his thoughts racing in excitement. A calm voice of logic was speaking unheeded within his mind.

"It would be difficult--a dangerous mission, I'll concede. What I propose to do is lead a small force of picked men--well armed to combat both swamp and Rillyti--lead them into Kranor-Rill. Alorri-Zrokros mentions that a path of sorts does exist. I've led a force through 'impenetrable' swamp before, and there I battled slinking natives with poisoned darts and treacherous snares. Logistically, this problem is similar and can be met with appropriate military solution. We'll enter Arellarti, and we'll unearth the secrets its ruins hold. What I find, I'll carry back to Selonari. And you'll have the weapons of elder Earth at your command."

"And what will you have, Kane?"

The stranger laughed. "Adventure... that for certain! And I trust your gratitude and confidence in me will lead you to reward me with a position of high rank. I'm not going to stay young forever... I hope that my years of fighting another's wars might leave me with more than a notched sword."

There was a note of mockery to his laughter, but Dribeck was well aware that he dealt with an ambitious man. "I'll give it a lot of thought," he promised. "Obviously, there'll be countless problems in organizing and carrying out your expedition--which I'm still doubtful that I'll back." But he and Kane both knew the proposal had captured his imagination. It was a long shot--hopelessly so, perhaps--but long shots paid a very high return for a paltry risk. Arms and equipment were mostly the property of the mercenaries... and it cost nothing for a mercenary to die.

With a thoughtful grunt Dribeck slid from the keg to rejoin the riotous throng. But the spirit of carefree buoyancy did not return to him.

Far south of Selonari, the forest confidently swept on. A blue-green sea of giant trees, flecked with ever broadening patches of white as it halted against the rocky coast--the Cold Forests, where paths that led to the Ice Sea had seldom felt the tread of man. The forest's advance was not unbroken. Just to the south of Selonari grew a cancer. A festering abscess blighted the Southern Lands for tens of miles, swallowed the clear mountain rivers that fed its sickness, drained as a fistula through a wound in the Lesser Ocalidad Mountains and into the Western Sea. A rotting land. Kranor-Rill.

At Kranor-Rill the forest faltered. The proud, straight trunks gave way to stunted weaklings as the land began to sink. With an almost perceptible break, the forest ceased, the swamp began. Cypress was now the largest tree, its tortured roots gasping through the tepid slime, where even willow and sycamore drowned. Perhaps the soil still bore its taint of ancient salt sea, for even the fertile mulch of decay seemed unable to support verdure normally encountered in swampland. There was a poisoned maze of twisted trunks, of thorn-guarded scrub, of writhing vines. The vines--these were best suited to Kranor-Rill, thin creepers like drawn copper wire that tore with barbed kiss at those who brushed against them. Gargantuan lianas entwined about the trees--eventually amassing so thick as to choke their hosts--forming grotesque tangles of free-standing coils as their victims rotted in their grasp. Cowering, choking, poisonous, parasitic creatures--the vines were the spirit of Kranor-Rill.

It was a cold swamp, but not with the clean chill of the Cold Forests on which it bordered. The unwholesome warmth of an ocean of decay rotted the crisp cold to a corpse-like chill, like the buried incalescence of some deep and teaming crypt. From this rose a thick and ever present mist, a cloak of smothering vapor that clung to the morass, swallowed its chaotic vegetation, masked its unfathomed quicksand bogs. Kranor-Rill was a poisoned labyrinth whose oozing breath obscured the deadly hazards of its maze.

A golden-eyed serpent with scales like yellow mud broke through the green-scum crust of a dark pool and seized a man who passed too near its edge. Its wedge-like head gaped awesome jaws in a flash of hungry white as it struck, sinking double-tiered fangs into the soldier's thigh. Thrown to the mud by the impact, he had only time for a frightened howl of pain before the serpent embraced him in coils thicker than his heaving chest. Too late the mercenary sought his sword--his arm was pinioned tight against his side. Somehow his free hand found a dirk. That hand stabbed convulsively, hopelessly, at the crushing coils that drew him irresistibly into the pool. Dark water stifled shriek of dread, muffled crack of splintering bone, cloaked glint of yellow coils. The crust of green scum drew a final, ruffled curtain to the scene.

It had lasted but a few seconds. The victim's startled companions broke from their frozen horror and rushed too late to the pool's edge. Across its fetid surface, scum boiled frantically, testimony to the death struggle writhing below. The enraged mercenaries jabbed swords and spears into the pool in useless retaliation, sinking to their knees in slime. A few thrusts seemed to strike resistance and brought eager curses, but the black water held its secret well. As the churning subsided, threads of dark crimson were seen tracing a pattern against the green scum. Whose blood diluted the swamp muck was never known--serpent and prey had vanished.

Angered at this newest setback, Kane drove his men back from the treacherous pool. Already they had paused to drag two men from unseen patches of quicksand, while a third had been engulfed by the morass before any hand could reach him. Two soldiers lost this quickly from his band! Worse yet, half a day had slipped past while they trudged through the reeking muck, and Kane was uncertain as to the distance that must yet be covered before darkness. Night, in ruined Arellarti would be ordeal enough. But if night overtook them still shuffling through the swamp...

Kane cursed and slapped his arm. The bloodstone ring wriggled on his mud-slick finger and came perilously close to slipping off. It would have been wiser to keep the jewel in a secure pouch, but for reasons of his own, Kane stubbornly displayed the outsize ornament on his hand. A smear of blood on his arm marked the death meal of a swollen mosquito. Similar stigmata adorned like plague spots the exposed flesh of them all. Sourly Kane rubbed swamp slime over his already befouled face and arms, wondering if this provision in any degree slackened the incessant attack of the swarming insects.

"Two down--twenty-three to go," commented Banlid, Kane's paunchy second-in-command. "Kane, this stinking trail is going to lead us somewhere before dark, isn't it? I'm hoping it'll be the far side of this damn swamp!"

"It'll take us to Arellarti, and well before night," Kane growled, exhibiting confidence far in excess of his private feelings. Banlid had accompanied him at Dribeck's suggestion, and it was obvious that the Selonari acted as his lord's representative. It was an expected precaution, one which Kane accepted without resentment. "Regroup the men," he ordered. "This time maybe they'll keep to the trail and show a little more vigilance. The Rillyti can blend into this undergrowth as well concealed as that swamp python, and their strike will be as deadly!"

It was too much to expect that their intrusion could escape the attention of the Rillyti, Kane realized. But the risk was unavoidable, and he could only hope that the swamp creatures would be reluctant to attack so large a group of armed men--although their dim minds might consider this trespass sufficient provocation. Selonari had a few grim tales of skirmishes between man and Rillyti. Even allowing for the license of legend, the accounts were not cause for confidence. And it was only logical that the Rillyti would maintain some watch over the only direct path into their domain.