The Sword and the Sorcerer (2 page)

The flaming torches in their hands cast long, moving shadows of the four figures on the sweating walls. None of the savagery of the night was heard inside the mountain. Except for the sound of their own breathing and their uncertain feet the silence was total. Yet it was an evil, pregnant silence, out of which the intruders intuitively knew some kind of horror could be born at any minute.

As they walked stoop-shouldered to avoid hitting their helmeted heads against the low-ceilinged tunnel, an unearthly glow began to blossom at the end of the long passage.

Ban-Urlu started salivating at the sight of the soft, reddish illumination.

Cromwell’s right hand gripped the bejeweled hilt of his well-honed sword; whatever threat that strange glow at the end of the tunnel denoted, he was prepared to grapple with it.

Malcolm rubbed his bloodshot eyes and wondered if that unholy light was not the product of the wine and opium he had imbibed the night before.

Lord Buckingham had never seen such a sinister-looking shine before. He began to tremble and glance longingly over his shoulder toward the makeshift hole through which they had come.

“Sire, would you deem it disrespectful if I waited for you outside?” Lord Buckingham asked meekly.

“Make one move to leave us,” Cromwell growled, “and your dubious balls will dangle from the tip of my sword!”

The ruby-red glow grew brighter the closer they got to it. Suddenly they found themselves passing the threshold of a cavernous chamber of rock, where they saw, awe-struck, the source of the supernatural light.

In the center of the deathly still tomb was a massive casket made of some material Cromwell had never seen before. Lodged in the top of the casket was slab of red marble, gleaming like the huge red eye of a dragon. It was from this mysterious stone that the unwavering stream of almost mystical light poured.

Cromwell and his men guardedly moved toward the magnificent coffin, but Ban-Urlu motioned that they stand back. Her protruding eyes feverish with anticipation, the twisted witch raised one of her emaciated hands and pointed to the luminous casket.

“It is there that our prince of demons sleeps!”

She kept inching closer and closer to the casket until she hovered adoringly over it, herself bathed in the unearthly illumination. Slowly, with the controlled sensuousity of a young woman caressing her lover’s back, the old hag began to lustfully stroke the glowing stone, her withered face afire with some secret rapture. And as her hands lovingly caressed the marble her normally raspy voice made soft cooing, purring noises.

Cromwell studied the old crone with disgust. Spittle dribbled out of the corners of her caved-in mouth and the dilated pupils of her green eyes tilted upward into her sockets. For a fleeting moment the witch reminded him of the look of ecstasy on the wench who rode astride him the night before. He shuddered. To imagine that old bag of bones in a sexual context was enough to make him want to retch!

“That’s not a man’s shaft you stroke, you filthy old hag, but a casket! Get on with it!”

Ban-Urlu hissed and threw him a jaundiced look. But she instantly stopped pawing the stone and wiped the contempt from her face when she saw Cromwell’s menacing scowl. The murderous king’s volcanic temper was known and feared throughout Aragon. And to end her life impaled on his sword before the casket of Xusia would damn her soul to drift through space for eternity!

Without a word, Ban-Urlu untied the lizard-skin bag from the rope about her waist and removed a small, ornate oil lamp. Using her torch to light it, she set the urn on the marble stone. An eerie finger of mind-altering smoke rose from the lamp and she drew the smoke deeply into her lungs. Now Ban-Urlu began to shuffle and whirl around the casket, bowing obseouiously in the direction of the coffin. As she worked herself into a state of possession Ban-Urlu uttered the same incantation over and over again:

“Xathos makid asom bacathulu, macathulus!”

It was the arcane language of another age, long, long ago. The longer she chanted the incantation the plainer it became that she was in communion with invisible spirits. Perspiration broke out on her face, while the modulations of her voice suggested several other voices speaking through her. Once again Ban-Urlu’s green eyes rolled upward into her sockets, leaving only the whites exposed. Over and over she droned,

“Xathos makid asom bacathulu, macathulus!”

Now as she circled the casket for the tenth time she began to shudder and stagger, knocking up against the glowing coffin, acting as if occult forces were using her as a channel to enter the precious thing lying inside the casket.

Buckingham was trembling uncontrollably and glancing incessantly over his shoulder, as if fixing to flee. When his gaze returned to the hag, who was reeling like an old drunken whore, and he saw what was happening to the casket, the torch slipped from his hand to the ground and he had to steady himself against the moist wall to keep from keeling over.

The same sight evoked a different response from Cromwell and Malcolm. They unsheathed their swords and assumed a defensive position. But even while they did these things they knew their weapons were powerless against the metamorphosis taking place before their incredulous eyes.

In a matter of seconds the three men witnessed the casket become composed of hundreds of tortured human heads, some of them actually moving.

Next the tomb began to hiss and swell, with a demonic chorus whispering the same incantation coming from Ban-Urlu’s bloodless lips.

Suddenly an icy, foul wind exploded into the tomb chamber. Cromwell and Malcolm automatically hoisted their swords and exchanged glances of disbelief when they realized the terrible wind emanated not from the outside but from somewhere within the casket.

The wind rapidly became a fierce gale causing their long cloaks to flap, while whipping up the tomb’s ancient dust in great, choking clouds. Only Ban-Urlu seemed impervious to the dreadful tempest, as her voice and the sibilant whispers of demons blended with the typhoonlike wind. Cromwell, Malcolm, and Buckingham could hardly remain upright as the tempest knocked them about. They had to bury their faces under their cloaks to escape being blinded and suffocated by the churning dust and great veils of cobwebs.

Gripped by stark terror, Buckingham was beside himself. His short pudgy arms flayed at the buffeting wind as if warding off invisible attackers. He was absolutely convinced that if he didn’t get away from this horrible place he would perish. Bending his head as far as his inflated stomach, he bucked and charged through the wind toward the tunnel with every ounce of strength he possessed, teary pleas for help issuing from his blubberous lips.

Buckingham’s piercing cries jolted Ban-Urlu out of her trance. When she saw he was trying to leave the tomb she screamed at him.

“Stop, you fool! On your life do not leave this chamber!”

Whether from the shock of Ban-Urlu’s screeching warning or from the lashing wind, his short, stubby legs lost balance and he fell on his helmeted head, the impact of the hard ground on metal instantly plumeting him into oblivion.

Suddenly the ground beneath them began to shimmer and shake. What felt like a tidal wave hitting the tiny island deflected their interest in Buckingham’s fate to their own safety. The next second the unmistakable rumbles and seismic concussions of an earthquake tossed the stunned trio to the floor of the tomb, rocking and shaking them as if they were in the palsied hand of a giant. The whole world seemed to be ripping apart at the seams and toppling off its axis. The final, cataclysmic Day of Judgment appeared to have arrived.

Into this utter chaos materialized thousands of locusts, flying about the tomb in a clicking, buzzing frenzy. The two men and the witch used their fists to beat the swirling blackness of insects away from their faces. And through the terrible clamor of locusts, violent earth-tremors, and their own shouts and curses came the blood-curdling baying of wolves and mad dogs.

Then, in a flash, the whirling tumult disappeared as suddenly as it had started. The locusts were gone. The earth was once more inert. The winds had vanished. And the tomb once again was still as universal death.

The only disquieting change, and which each of them felt, was the presence of some new awesome force.

Slowly the trio scrambled to their feet, their eyes focusing on the now steaming casket. Cromwell gestured that Ban-Urlu should approach it first.

The screwed-up features of her hag’s face once more alive with adoring anticipation, Ban-Urlu staggered to the casket and peered into its now open interior. Immediately she grew incoherent, her face moving in uncontrollable contortions.

“Look!” the witch screamed in exultation. “Xusia lives!”

Cromwell and Malcolm rushed to her side and also gazed into the casket, grimacing with revulsion and astonishment at the sight that confronted them.

The slab of red marble was gone. In its place was a pool of blood inside the casket. In the midst of this crimson broth stretched a long, thin, leathery-skinned creature whose bulbous head, closed lids, utterly hairless face and head, scrawny body and distended stomach made him resemble a jaundiced but newborn human—but one that was already fully grown and whose parents might have been ghouls. On his parched and pleated face was stamped the telltale signs of centuries of depravity and evil.

“The sorcerer!” Cromwell exclaimed, recoiling a few feet when Xusia’s hooded eyes sprung open.

“May we not live to regret this day!” Malcolm muttered under his breath, also jumping back from the casket as if touched by fire.

Like a slimy serpent rising from the marshes to survey the approach of enemies, Xusia slowly rose out of the casket to a sitting position, blood dripping from his triangulated features, while his huge reptilian orbs quickly adjusted to conscious life again. When his transfixing stare rested on Cromwell and Malcolm, for them it was like gazing into a blazing infinity of unregenerate sin. And when the sorcerer opened his thin-lipped mouth, the foulness of his breath bore the smell of decaying corpses.

Now those same malevolent eyes shifted to Ban-Urlu, who was close to the casket gleefully cackling and triumphantly rubbing her hands over the resurrection her magic had wrought.

“Who art thou, hag?” Xusia’s voice seemed to drag up from the bowels of his being, raspy, deep, resonating throughout the tomb.

Dazzled by the honor of being addressed by this ancient and most powerful of demons, Ban-Urlu fell to her bony knees and prostrated herself before him. But when she spoke in her whinning manner, her voice betrayed cold fear along with joy. For she knew that the blood-drenched sorcerer could snuff out her life with but a wish. And the chilling thought swept through her that perhaps Xusia, after a thousand years of uninterrupted sleep, might resent having been awakened.

“Oh great, dark Lord . . . I am called Ban-Urlu. A witch of the Sani Order!”

Though his arms were spidery thin and his body wasted, superhuman power nevertheless streamed from some inner wellspring of his being. And it was felt by all three intruders. So palpable was Xusia’s powerful presence that when he addressed Ban-Urlu again, for her it was like once more, being pushed backwards by the force that had raged in the tomb only minutes ago.

“I thank thee for the work done in my behalf. Rise!”

The sorcerer held out his blood-smeared hand to the thrilled witch. In appreciation of his gesture Ban-Urlu reverently took his extended hand and proceeded to lick and suck the blood from Xusia’s fingers.

“Disgusting pig,” Cromwell grumbled, removing the helmet to brush his blond, matted hair from his forehead.

The remark now drew the hideously grinning sorcerer’s attention to him.

“Careful, sir!” Malcolm whispered. “The thing did not like your comment.”

“And who might thou be?” Xusia sized up every well-hewn part of Cromwell’s sinewy body.

The king decided that it was time they stopped being so awed by the loathsome creature. Xusia might misinterpret awe for weakness. The moment to assert his sovereign authority over the sorcerer was now.

Cromwell’s hand once more resting on the jewel-encrusted sword, he pulled himself to his full height and majestically declared, “I am Titus Cromwell! Supreme King and Lord of Aragon!”

Xusia smirked. “Your underling and the hag are properly humbled by me. Yet you show neither respect nor fear. Pray tell me why?”

“I have slain dragons far greater in strength than yours, Xusia. Besides, I know the mystical law decrees you must serve the man who brings about your resurrection . . . or you risk eternal damnation.”

“Ah. Now I understand. Ban-Urlu has initiated you into some of the secrets of our Black Bible. Very well. What is it you wish of me?”

“I need your help in conquering Eh-Dan. It is the richest kingdom in the civilized world, and I must have it! You will help me achieve that dream.”

While Cromwell and Xusia conversed, Malcolm and Ban-Urlu listened and watched enthralled. If the two most ruthless and powerful beings on earth should join forces, the pact could affect the destiny of the world for centuries to come.

“But you still have not adequately explained why you need my services. You are a king, with a network of spies and one of the most powerful armies on earth.”

“Yes. And I have conquered many kingdoms, but Eh-Dan has always escaped me. Four times have I been defeated by the indomitable King Richard of Eh-Dan. But with your aid and my army, I know this time I will be victorious!”

“And if I still refuse?”

“Either you assist me or I will unleash all my forces to destroy you.”

“And if I should comply, what reward wouldst thou bestow upon me?”

Malcolm swallowed his fear, pushed the hag aside and stepped forward. “The life we have given you, toad, should suffice! Besides, what assurance do we have that your reputed powers aren’t based on pure superstition?”

Xusia glared at Malcolm and hissed. How dare this insolent, dissipated swine question his mantric powers. He would show the scum, all of them, what his unearthly powers could do, right here in the tomb, now! Then he would see them cower and display the respect that he deserved!