Tales of the Hidden World (19 page)

5.

Varles gasped. In the meager light from the doorway, pile upon pile of precious stones glowed dully. A wall of stacked gold bars gleamed to his left, and another of silver to his right. And everywhere, jewels: some naked, others still in gold and silver settings. Strings of pearls and necklaces of faceted and polished stones. Rings, bracelets, coronets, and amulets—the loot of an age!

Jarryl sank to her knees and reaching into the nearest pile held up a handful of multicolored fire. She turned a glowing face to Varles.

He grinned. “What think you of my dreams now?”

Jarryl chuckled and plunged both hands into the sparkling pile before her. She held up another batch of brilliant dazzle, and then threw them aside to grab a handful of gold coins and toss them into the air, followed by another and another.

“It’s raining gold!” Her laughter rolled back and forth in the dimly lit room. Varles smiled, but made no move to examine any of the wealth stacked about him. Shade moved to his side.

“Beautiful it is, Captain, but how are we to get it back to the ship? With your crew gone, and their killers still out there waiting for us . . .” He shook his head.

Varles frowned, then nodded at a large wooden chest half full of gold coins.

“We fill that with the choicest jewels; we can manage the weight between us. I’m more concerned with what we’ll use for weapons; swords were not made for use as levers.”

He drew his scimitar; even in the sparse light it was a sorry sight, seeming more a butcher’s blade than a fighting man’s weapon. Shade chuckled quietly.

“Take your pick, Captain.”

Varles followed Shade’s sweeping gesture and grinned at the heap of jewel-encrusted swords and daggers lying in a corner. He threw aside his battered and notched blade, and rooting through the pile came up with a long curving scimitar that he tossed to Jarryl. She stopped draping strings of semiprecious stones around her neck long enough to snatch it deftly out of the air and test its balance. With a quick nod of approval, she sheathed it in place of her discarded sword. Varles rejected a short sword with a diamond-studded hilt in favor of a broad double-edged sword unadorned save for a single polished emerald set at the crosspiece. He hefted the blade, admired the superb balance, and then glanced across at Shade, who had made no move to examine the treasure or the weapons.

“Will ye not take something for yourself?”

“No thank ye, Captain. I do not carry weapons; I have no need of them.”

Varles shrugged and started loading gold and jewels into the solid oak chest, scooping out the less valuable coins as he did so. Jarryl helped him and the chest was soon full. Varles slipped a few gold and silver bangles as far up his arms as they would go, and then glanced around one last time.

“We’d best leave it at that. Any more and we’ll be too loaded down to fight.” Her glanced at Jarryl and had to hide a smile. Her arms were buried under bracelets, and her fingers blazed with jeweled rings.

“And how are you going to wield a sword with all that junk in the way?”

She glared at him and reluctantly stripped off a few rings. Varles shook his head and took the weight of the chest. Jarryl took the other end when it became clear that Shade had no intention of doing so.

“Ready?”

Jarryl nodded, a dozen necklaces jangling accompaniment. They lifted. Staggeringly slowly out into the street, they were astonished to see the sun already sinking into the sea. Shade frowned.

“We’d best hurry. It’s risky enough to use the sorceries of day in this cursed city; I have no wish to try the sorceries of night in such a place.”

“But we can’t use the jungle path back to the ship,” Jarryl protested, taking the chest’s weight on one thigh. “Those bastards could still be waiting for us.”

“Aye, they could. Do ye know any other way out of the city?”

Jarryl scowled and shook her head.

“Then we have no choice,” Shade said flatly. “It’s either that or cut a new path, and we have not the time.”

“We take the path,” Varles decided. He signaled to Jarryl, and they lifted the chest again as Shade started down the street. Jarryl growled a curse, and they moved slowly after him. Far above the city, a lone raven soared in silence.

6.

In the jungle, they made slow progress. Shade had to use Varles’s sword to cut back foliage that had already fallen back across the path since they last used it. Though its miraculously keen edge made the job easy, he soon tired of it, and during one of their frequent rest stops he muttered a spell that had the creepers and hanging vines crawl aside as they approached. Varles and Jarryl exchanged a glance but made no comment. They staggered grimly on. Despite all their efforts to make haste, night fell before they reached the coast.

The longboat was still there, though only just out of reach of the rising tide. Varles inspected it thoroughly, before helping launch it into the chill waters. His shoulder blades crawled every time he turned his back on the murky jungle, and he knew he would not rest easy till the
Revenge
was pulling away from Port Blood with a hold full of treasure and sails full of wind.

The longboat made its way slowly toward the ship, with Varles and Jarryl at the oars. The full moon was half masked behind clouds and the
Revenge
was no more than a patch of darkness against the skyline. Varles abruptly stopped rowing and signaled for Jarryl to ship her oar. He studied the ship’s silhouette. Where were the nightlights and lookouts? He gestured for the others to lean close; there was no telling how far voices might carry on the still night.

“The ship is too quiet; something’s wrong.”

“You think the crew might have been attacked here as well?”

“It’s possible, Jarryl. If another band had come for the treasure, they’d want no rivals to follow their wake.”

“Perhaps they grew tired of waiting and came ashore themselves?”

“Not my crew, Shade.”

Varles and Jarryl improvised muffles for their oars and rowed the remaining distance in silence. Varles pulled himself up the rigging and swung agilely onto the bridge. The lookout was not at his post, and the night-light’s wick was cold. Jarryl swung over the side and stood beside him, her new sword swinging lazily before her. Shade joined them silently a moment later. They stared about them.

Apart from the soft creaking of the rigging, the ship was quiet. The wheel spun freely back and forth as currents moved the rudder. Varles gestured for the others to check belowdecks while he searched topside. From the crew’s quarters, where empty hammocks dangled unstrung; to the galley, where an evening’s meal lay half prepared; to the bridge, where Varles paced frowning alone: the ship was deserted.

They met again with grim faces. Whatever had taken their companions in the jungle had also struck aboard the
Revenge
.

“What now?” Jarryl swept her sword back and forth before her is frustration.

“We get out of these cursed waters,” Varles answered curtly, eyeing the rigging with a calculating eye.

“And leave the treasure?” Jarryl turned incredulous eyes on him.

“Treasure’s no use to a dead man. With what we brought out in the chest, we can buy a new crew to come back for the rest, enough to stage a full-scale war if need be.”

“Quite right, Captain. We only invite danger by remaining.” Shade’s calm voice was at odds with his darkly frowning eyes.

“So, we sail on the morning tide. The three of us can manage her long enough to reach one of the main shipping lanes, and we’ve more than enough to bribe passage on whatever ship first comes along. Jarryl, you stand first watch; wake me in three hours, and I’ll take the next.”

“Aye, Captain.”

They slept on deck together, side by side. Jarryl sat guard with knees drawn up to her chest and her sword on the deck beside her. The ship’s familiar creakings were a comfort after the eerie silence of Port Blood and its surrounding jungle. The waves lapping against the sides of the ship were soothing, and she had to keep shaking herself to avoid falling asleep after the day’s hard labor. The ship’s rigging hung silhouetted against the sky. It trembled as the wind shook it. Jarryl’s hackles rose. There was no wind. . . .

She shook Varles’s shoulder and he came quickly awake, dagger in hand. She gestured at the shaking rigging and he nodded, rousing Shade with a cautionary hand over his mouth. Shade came awake with a start, and the three stood facing the trembling ropes. Varles silently offered Shade the silver dagger; he took it without comment.

A shadow appeared against the skyline. All three gaped as a crimson moon swam out from behind the clouds to reveal a thing that had once been a man but was no longer. Half rotten and covered with the slime found on decks of ships long sunk, it stood swaying silently before them with eyes of phosphorescent fire, a battered and corroded scimitar in its bony grasp. More of the foul creatures swarmed over the side as Varles remembered the slime on Baran’s back. He stepped forward and his sword spun a deadly pattern before him, wreaking havoc among the silent invaders, though no blood spurted. The corpses fell if the heads were severed, but even then they made no cry, and their fellows lumbered closer, ever closer.

Varles and Jarryl fought savagely side by side, blades gleaming in the sparse light. Shade was squatting behind them, mixing powders in a small brass urn and muttering arcane runes under his breath. With Varles’s silver dagger, he made a small cut in his wrist, so that a stream of blood ran down to mix with the powders in the urn. Before him, the fight raged back and forth in the cramped space, and for every corpse that fell another took its place. Already exhausted after the day’s work and little sleep, Varles was gradually slowing, though his massive strength was still enough to send corpses flying clean over the side whenever a solid blow connected. Jarryl hacked her way through the crowding attackers, but even her vitality was flickering as the day’s fatigue grew in her anew. And still they spun and danced, their swords licking out to reap a deadly harvest.

Then Varles’s heart lurched as over the side of his ship clambered what was left of his crew. Dripping wet and with their death wounds still bloody, they stumbled forward to die again, taking their vengeance on those who dared the curse of Lord Ravensbrook.

Above the ship, the skies were full of soaring ravens, screeching triumphantly on the night air.

Even as he fought, one part of Varles’s mind began to understand what had happened in Port Blood those many centuries ago, when all who had drowned or been buried in the port’s bay had been summoned up to slay those who offended Lord Ravensbrook. Those who died then were dragged in turn back to the sea to become more slaves at his command. Thus came the legend of the ghouls of Ravensbrook.

Somewhere back in the city must lie a signal that called them forth to live again, Varles mused as he struck down the dead man who had once been his third mate and threw the headless body over the side with one sweep of an aching arm. Far above, the hoarse screams of the ravens grew fiercer, and Varles’s lips stretched in a bloody grin. The ravens. When they were disturbed, the corpses walked. The old Lord must have had a sense of humor, after all. Varles fought on, sword swinging heavily back and forth, and Jarryl staggered on at his side. Familiar faces loomed before them, but still they hacked and cut, though they seemed to strike down friend as often as foe. Behind them Shade suddenly cried out, his harsh voice rising easily above the sounds of the battle and the screams of the ravens.

“Awake, awake, ye Northern Winds. . . . Gather ye thunders and lightnings, and send us a wind to carry us from these tainted waters. . . . Awake, awake, ye Northern Winds!”

Blood rilled down his arm as he stood erect in the stance of summoning, holding Varles’s silver dagger above his head so that it blazed in the moonlight. Still Varles battled on with Jarryl striving wearily at his side, blood dripping from their wounds till the deck grew slippery beneath their feet.

Then the ship’s creakings stirred into a new pattern as the deck lurched under their feet. The sails billowed out and filled as thunder rolled overhead and the first rain began to fall. Lightning split the sky and cracked down to strike the dagger Shade held aloft. He screamed once in agony but held the stance of summoning, though both his tunic and hair were afire. The ship lurched again as the wind rose and the blue glow of stormfire crawled along the ship’s mast. The
Revenge
began to pick up speed under the wind’s urging, and the things that were once men could no longer climb the ship’s sides. Varles and Jarryl quickly cut down those remaining on board and leaped to Shade’s side. Varles swung a blanket about his shoulders, smothering the flames, and together they lowered him to the deck.

Varles’s questing hand found a beating heart, though Shade’s body was covered in burns, and much of the sun-bleached hair was gone. As Jarryl watched, the gray eyes snapped open, questioning. She nodded and watched amazed as the blistered lips curled in a sardonic grin. She grinned savagely back.

The
Revenge
flew on before the rising storm, out to sea, flying to a cleaner setting and a more hospitable shore.

This was my first proper professional sale, to Andy Offutt for the anthology Swords Against Darkness, Volume 5, in 1979. I was watching an old pirate film on late-night television, full of fighting in the rigging, and ships blasting each other with cannon, and sword duels on the beach at dawn . . . and as soon as it was finished, I rushed upstairs and wrote this story. I’m still very proud of it, and just recently got around to writing a sequel: a novella called The Pit of Despair, which has just appeared from PS Publishing. I do love a good pirate story.

In the Labyrinth

S
hade lay shackled
in the dungeons under Mhule. Silver chains led from ankles, wrists, and throat to a single iron loop deeply embedded in the damp stone wall. His eyes were blindfolded though neither torch nor lamp lit his windowless cell. The heavily armed guard who pushed a bowl of bread and slop through the door’s revolving section shuddered nonetheless; for in the condemned cell, Shade was chuckling quietly, and there was murder in that laugh.

Captain Varles of the pirate ship
Revenge
, together with his first mate, Jarryl, stalked uneasily along the curving stone passage lit only by flickering oil lamps set high on the walls at irregular intervals and the blazing brands they carried. Damp collected on the low ceiling, sliding down pitted walls to collect in scummy puddles on the cracked stone floor. Straggly lichen and fungi pale as dead man’s flesh lay clumped where wall met floor.

In the dungeons under Mhule, all was silent, and Varles and Jarryl became convinced they were the only living things remaining. Jarryl took to peering into odd cells at random and once, when Varles thought he heard giggling in a dark cell, they held their torches to the window, but there was no one there. They strode on, passing deeper into the Labyrinth of Mhule.

When Varles last walked this route, it had been lit by brightly flaring torches, and a brace of well-bribed guides strode at his side. They had guarded his back while he made his deal with the man called Shade, who lay awaiting execution in Mhule’s deepest dungeon. Varles smiled grimly. Shade, master thief of the Known Kingdoms. The man who walked in shadows. Little good his titles had done him since he slew the King’s son. Now he waited only for the King’s torturers to ready themselves for his prolonged execution. Unless of course Varles should free him first.

The two guards now lay dead at the top of the long, winding stairway that led down from the guardhouse, because they would take no more bribes and had threatened to betray him rather than enter the catacombs at night. Varles frowned uneasily. Dark tales were told of the Labyrinth of Mhule, muttered in taverns as the night wore on, and shutters were slammed shut against an evil all the city seemed reluctant to discuss. After an evening’s wine, an old soldier, once a guard in the catacombs by day, had talked blearily to Varles and Jarryl of shadows with no man to carry them and paintings that stared with hostile eyes.

Varles’s hand rested on the hilt of his scimitar. He needed Shade if he was to take the lost treasure of Ravensbrook, called by some Port Blood. Any risk was worth it that would bring him one step nearer the treasure he had dreamed of for so long. He stopped suddenly and scowled. Jarryl followed his gaze, and her sword whispered from its scabbard as she took in the blood-splashed cell door half torn from its setting. She knelt and tested the blood with her free hand as Varles glared into the gloom about them, his scimitar at the ready. Jarryl glanced into the cell, but like the others before, it was empty.

“The blood’s freshly spilled, Captain, but there doesn’t seem to be a body.”

“Aye.” Varles stooped and picked up something half-hidden in the shadow of the cell door. Jarryl hissed softly. It was a human jawbone, with strings of bloody meat still hanging from it. Varles tossed it back into the shadows.

“It would appear we are not alone in the Labyrinth, Jarryl.”

They exchanged a glance and made their way deeper into the darkness, swords at the ready. Some time later, they came to an iron portcullis lowered against them. Varles growled a curse. His bribed guards had told him nothing of this, though in their defense it could be said that never had they entered the Labyrinth at night. No King, they insisted with hands atremble, could pay them enough to walk the catacombs while night lay across the land. Varles studied the heavy iron grating and sheathed his sword, handing his torch to Jarryl. He took firm hold of the chill metal and slowly took the strain. Ropes of muscle corded across his broad shoulders as the ironwork groaned and shifted, and then he snarled triumphantly as, with a tortured squeal, the gate lifted a few inches from the floor. He grabbed desperately at the sweat-slippery metal, his muscles standing out in sharp relief as the portcullis rose another inch and another.

Jarryl squeezed as far into the narrow gasp as she could, eyes smarting from the smoking torches she carried, and waited patiently, knowing that should Varles slip, the massive ironwork would surely crush her, but trusting him nonetheless. The gate lifted still further, and with some small cuts and much muttered cursing, Jarryl finally wriggled through. There was a dull thud as the portcullis tore itself from Varles’s grip, and Jarryl nodded soberly as the crude barbs at its base dug hungrily into the soft stone floor. She quickly wound up the portcullis with much complaining of its rusty chains. Varles ducked past the grating, and Jarryl let it fall again.

Together they inspected the flight of rough-hewn steps that led down to the last level of the Labyrinth. Worn dangerously smooth by the passing of many feet, they stretched away into an unrelieved darkness neither Varles nor Jarryl could plumb. Jarryl handed Varles his torch, and side by side they padded down into the gloom.

At the foot of the steps, they stopped and glared quickly about, for lying in a pool of blood were the two guards Varles had slain but an hour past up in the guardhouse. He studied the vilely mutilated bodies as Jarryl guarded his back with drawn sword.

“Strange,” he said slowly. “They insisted there was but one entrance to the Labyrinth, yet if that were true, how were they brought here without passing us?”

Jarryl shrugged lightly, eyes darting from shadow to shadow. “Have they any valuables on them, Captain? ’Twould be a shame to leave any sweets pickings for the morning’s guards.”

Varles nodded solemnly. “Aye, but it seems to me I took what little they had when I disposed of their services earlier this evening.” He shared a brief grin with Jarryl, before turning back to the guardsmen. “How came they to be ripped apart, from throat to crotch? I give a clean kill, always.”

Jarryl glanced at the mutilated corpses and shrugged uncomfortably, remembering the casually discarded jawbone. “Mauled by some animal, mayhap?”

“Aye.” Varles sounded unconvinced. “Have you noticed how clammy the air is down here?”

Jarryl nodded. “I’ve heard the Labyrinth extends far out under the harbor. There’s even some kind of mist down here.”

She gestured with her torch at a few wisps that dissipated into the dank air even as they watched.

They made their way further into the catacombs, passing cells obviously long abandoned, their dull metal doors scarred with the rust and filth of long neglect. Their attention was caught by paintings on the walls, which, starting at the foot of the stairs, depicted in marvelous hues a legend of the long ago, when Others stalked the Earth along with Man. Heroes vied with monsters, both so vividly presented Jarryl was hard-pressed not to reach out a hand and prove them real. There was a war, and in it battles and treacheries, foulness and great deeds, for this was a war between Man and those who ruled before him.

Varles studied the walls curiously, for though they were dripping with a brackish water, the dyes seemed strangely unaffected, as though soaked into the stone itself. They walked slowly on, torches held close to the walls that they might more clearly see the long story unfold. There were many heroes, most of whom died unpleasant deaths, but strangely only one demon, which recurred again and again until the story ended, so suddenly as to be surely unfinished. The final painting, just as the first, showed the demon wrapped in chains, striving to reach a crowned man who threatened it with a blazing brand.

“A strange history indeed,” Varles said slowly. “But I know this last man by his profile, Harak, first King of Mhule these centuries past. His head still marks their coins.”

“And the demon?” Jarryl asked, glancing at the wall and as quickly away again.

Varles frowned. “It seems to me there was a similar painting on the door leading down from the guardhouse, half-hidden under the grime of years. When I commented on it, the guards talked hastily of something else.” He shook his head and strode quickly on. Jarryl hurried after him.

The narrowing corridors led still downward, the cracked stone floor became ever more treacherous. Varles was no longer sure of his way, and more than once had to stop and retrace his steps. But finally, the torches revealed a featureless iron door set into the wall, with only a small revolving section to pass food through. Varles grinned, relieved his memory had not played him entirely false. He rapped on the door.

“Shade! Can ye hear me?”

“Aye! Get the door open and free me from these cursed chains!”

Varles sheathed his scimitar, took the ring of keys from his belt and began the slow process of trying them in turn. He soon found the right key and struggled with the obstinate lock.

“Captain Varles!” Shade’s voice floated through the gloom so clearly Jarryl would have sworn he stood beside her rather than the other side of a thick iron door.

“Aye, Shade, I’m still here. What is it ye want that can’t wait the few minutes it’ll take to free ye?”

“I have to know, Captain, is it day or night?”

Jarryl glanced at Varles, who shrugged.

“Night, Shade, when else might we come a-calling?”

He pushed the door open and by the light of the flickering torches Jarryl studied the beaten and manacled figure who lay in the far corner of the condemned cell. Long and lean with sun-bleached hair, he wore only a filthy bloodstained tunic and a dirty rag at his throat. Half-healed wounds showed clearly on his wiry frame, and blood dripped from ankles, wrists, and throat where the chains chafed him. Jarryl’s eyes widened; with no window, and no chance of release till his dying day, it was no wonder Shade had lost all track of time, but for what mad reason had the guards blindfolded a man kept in a completely dark cell?

As Varles entered the cell Jarryl heard a faint scuffling behind her. She spun, sword at the ready. Back down the corridor, something tittered in the darkness. She gripped her sword firmly and padded silently back down the passage.

Varles slipped his torch into a battered iron holder and busied himself with the deeply embedded iron loop, but this time the key was not easily to hand, and he began to doubt it was even on the ring. He paused, eyeing the wall dubiously. If all else failed, he could perhaps tug the iron ring far enough from the wall to saw at it with his scimitar.

“Captain, why are ye taking so long?” Shade’s patient voice jerked Varles from his reverie. “If this be night, we face certain danger here. In nights past, I have heard something scuffling outside my cell that from its sound I’d not face through choice, something only the cold iron of my door kept at bay. If I must use the sorceries of night in such a place as this, I’ll not answer for the consequences.”

Varles repressed a shiver at Shade’s calm and measured tone. He bent again to his task, and then spun suddenly around as Jarryl’s shocked scream echoed faintly in the distance.

On leaving Varles with Shade, Jarryl had quickly made her way back down the passage, sword held out before her. She knew the tales city dwellers told of this place, but her contempt for all who walked the land instead of a ship’s deck had led her to discount such fears till now. She felt sure something moved in the darkness ahead, though ever and again she rounded a corner with torch held high to find nothing but dancing shadows and the hint of a mocking titter. Whatever she was chasing seemed always to retreat before her, leading her back to the steps that ascended from this last level of the Labyrinth.

Jarryl sprang around the far corner in fighting stance to face an apparently empty corridor, but she knew better than to relax her vigilance. Whatever she pursued, she had not given it time to scurry far. She held her flickering torch a little higher, glanced down the corridor and gasped; the dead guards no longer sprawled at the foot of the stairs. Only a wide pool of blood remained to mark where they had lain.

A flicker of movement spun Jarryl around to face the wall at her right. She stared at the opening painting of the chained demon, uncertain as to what had caught her eye, and then her heart jumped as it slowly turned its awful head to look at her.

Swirling mists curled up around its misshapen body as the chains fell away, the painting coming horribly alive as she watched. A few strands of mist drifted out of the painting toward her, and then a thick fog boiled from the stone, filling the corridor. Jarryl backed away as the tittering sounded suddenly close and then screamed as something impossibly large loomed out of the fog. She dropped her torch and flailed out wildly with her sword, feeling something give under the keen blade’s urging. High-pitched chattering sounded in her ears as she turned and ran headlong back down the pitch-dark corridors.

Without her torch, she was soon lost, and rather than run blindly through the Labyrinth, she stopped to take her bearings. A light glowed dimly from a side passage, revealing that she stood before the final painting of the chained demon. The unsteady light grew stronger till she recognized Varles running toward her with drawn sword and a freshly blazing torch.

“What happened, Jarryl?”

“A demon, Captain.” Jarryl fought for breath. “The demon from the wall painting!”

Thick fog spilled suddenly from the painting beside them, filling the corridor. Shade’s voice rose faintly in the distance.

“Free me, Captain! Ye need my help!”

The naked urgency in his voice contrasted strangely with his polite use of the formal
ye
. As Varles and Jarryl stood together, blades at the ready, something moved out of the fog and into the dim light. Fully a dozen feet tall, hunched over in the cramping confines of the passage, its bony head scraped the ceiling while massive arms drooped to the floor. It was long and lean, with a barbed tail that hung twitching past malformed flanks. There were no eyes, only dusty sockets where eyes had once been, yet it followed their movements nonetheless. Its gaping maw revealed row upon row of stained, serrated teeth.