The Tower of Death

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Last Monster

Irnic waited on the dock at Brigantium Harbour, with Zarabdas. The two stood at sea’s edge with cloaks blowing in the salt breeze. They watched while Raven came in. Well behind the king’s cousin and his mage-adviser stood two others, companions or bodyguards of Irnic Break-ax. They held torches whose yellow flames leaned far and danced in the breeze.

The men of Raven came ashore, and none could hurry too much to get to ale and wine. Irnic said naught, but his eyes questioned.

“Done,” Cormac mac Art said. “And your mission?”

“Done,” Irnic said, and they betook themselves in silence from the harbour.

The triumphant seamen, Danes and Suevi as one, entered the encampment set up for Raven’s crew. Waiting women there were, and wine and ale both to quaff, and a story to talk on for hours.

Cormac and Wulfhere, with Irnic and Zarabdas, must confer. Ugly or no, dangerous or no, there were matters of which they still did not wish to apprise Veremund. Therefore they must conceal this conference. This Irnic and the Palmyran had already discussed. They guided their piratical allies to Zarabdas’s spacious and cozy home, which Veremund the King had caused to be raised close by his own keep.

Cormac was surprised to see no old servant tenanting this tapestried, carpeted home of the eastborn mage. No; the servants of the dark and bald man who was so serious of mind and purpose and who advised a king were… most attractive, and far from old. Perhaps five-and-twenty was the sleek-hipped woman whose hair was almost black and whose eyes were kohled, and the blond, milk-skinned lass with the swollen hips and bust must be no older than in her middle teens. Both were passing well-favoured of face and figure, and quiet. They looked adoringly on their black-bearded lord.

An amazing man, this Zarabdas of Palmyra of the sands! Full and full of surprises had he proven, this man Cormac was now sure was far from the plotting inimical magicker he’d at first thought.

Wine was poured by those winsome servants, and Wulfhere and Cormac kept their hands and remarks to themselves.

“Fetch the crock of ale from ’neath the floorboard,” Zarabdas said, and when that had been done: “Become scarce and deaf, Zenobia and Odainata; we have business and did you hear it you would be in terrible danger.”

The woman and the girl, whose names Zarabdas had surely been pleased to give them himself, made themselves scarce.

“Terrible danger?” Cormac said.

“Only some. We do border on treason, keeping matters from the king whilst we decide what to tell him. But such words, and we being who we are, ensure that my pretty little girls will not try to listen far more than would a closed door.”

“Excellent!” Wulfhere said. “Suberb wine! I’d think ye’d merely put a spell of sleep on them. He eyed the jug of ale.

“I do not spell,” Zarabdas said quietly, “save at my king’s command. I am a man of another people, far from here; of a city smashed into ruin by the Romans two centuries agone so that now it is but a shadow of the Palmyra of Odainath and that great queen Zenobia. Here I am welcome, and well treated, and honoured. An my loyalty and restraint make me a strange mage, so be it. I do not seek to be like other men… any more than do you two, who slay so few on captured ships.”

“The barge-” Irnic prompted.

“Is gone,” Cormac said. “Smashed and sunk. Those who crewed and accompanied it are dead, to number half a hundred.”

“Accompanied-”

“Half a-”

Cormac and Wulfhere told them of their activities this night, with Wulfhere discovering and declaiming the while that Zarabdas’s crock-sealed ale was the best this side of Dane-mark. Irnic and Zarabdas listened closely, and asked questions. Disbelief was neither considered nor possible.

“By Arawn’s horns!” Irnic grunted at last, challenging the Dane for the large glazed pot of ale. “What foulness! And the kelp?”

“Guided by them,” Cormac said. “Sent by them, only to stop the beacon so that theirs could lure men to death… doubtless that barge grew in size with each ship they seized! The seaweed is only seaweed. Without its masters to send it, it is no menace to anyone-but can be excellent in a stewpot with pork!”

“Foulness indeed,” Zarabdas said. “Cthulhu is a god not of this earth! We may be sure that what your men interrupted tonight, Commander, was a temple to that same tentacled god who hates humankind. And… now I suppose I suspect something else, though we may never know, unless she’s found. Ah, fool that I’ve been! Wise Zarabdas, never to have suspected, much less guessed! Yet it’s from a flower in the desert called Palmyra I come, far from the sea. As for Lucanor… a native of Antioch that one is, close to the cultish Levantine lands. There is the ancient home, ye see, of such as the Phoenicians and Philistines… seafaring peoples. Aye, and we may be sure that the Philistine sea-god Dagon is no other in truth than Cthulhu from… elsewhere. Off this very earth. As for Lucanor-who can doubt that he studied in Levantine cities? Was he brought the cult here, and was he moved swiftly to bind to him certain peasants he treated…”

“And nobles,” Irnic said. “Or a noble: forget not Lord Unscel!”

“And,” Zarabdas said, “the queen.”

And they were silent with thoughts none of them liked.

Cormac broke that silence: “Suppose Lucanor came here because he divined the location of Cthulhu’s keep…”

“R’lyeh,” Zarabdas said. “And you are convinced it is just off our shores.”

“Aye. Fathoms down, where once plains rolled. I know.”

Irnic and the mage stared with knitted brows at the Gael.

“Dispute him not,” Wulfhere said, with a most unusual quietness of voice. “When my battle-brother says he knows something such as that, we other men may merely accept. A god has touched this son of a noble of Eirrin,” the Dane solemnly told them, ignoring the fact that he was wont japingly to call his Gaelic swordbrother a pig-farmer’s son. “He knows better than any that some life-forces return again and again, for-”

“All,” Irnic said.

“All souls return in the Endless Ring,” Zarabdas said.

“Well, we Danes don’t hold so, though Cormac’s experiences have troubled me with frowns on this happy face. Yet who would question our skalds-and who’d dare give the question to the All-father and his thunder-bringing son!” He gave three unbelieving foreigners a mildly truculent look. “At any rate, Cormac remembers. It comes on him like a dream, and him awake. If he says that once the Sueves were green with purple hair, believe him. If he says I was once Alexander of the Greeks, I believe him. If he says we slew Cthulhu’s servants just on the doorstep of his undersea keep-believe.”

“Never am I after telling ye it’s Alexander ye be, Wulfhere.”

“No, but it’s a pleasant thought, a great conqueror and all-and he was red of hair, wasn’t he?”

Cormac made a face and waved a hand impatiently. “Ye’ve heard our tale. The sea and Brigantium Harbour are clear. Now what of your activities this night, Breaker of Axen?”

“Some time I must tell you how I came by my sobriquet,” Irnic said, but no smile lighted his face. “Was a dark cult we crushed this night. Nor did we invade that hellish temple soon enow. A peasant child-a sweet little thing with fine parents I’d night with-was sacrificed in a foul rite this night, the way we have not done for centuries! Aye, and still in Lucanor’s hand was that bloody knife when we broke in, in force, and in his other hand her… her dripping heart. All the members of that cult he presided over are… being detained. Three fought like demons, but we took them alive; including the noble Unscel-my own wife’s cousin! Others were there, though, as guards: those wore weapons and mail under their muffling cloaks, and gave battle. Sore was the shield-clashing for a time, and more blood than an innocent child’s now splashes that place. My men were taken by surprise, and slow to draw steel and fight in a temple, until one was down bleeding. I lost that man. Another bears a wound will keep him down for months. As for the cult-guards: all are dead save one. Him we persuaded to speak, as he liked not the prospect of a candle’s being prodded into his wound and therein turned.”

Wulfhere and Cormac showed teeth, though the Dane’s grim grin was broader.

“Not Suevi, those armed men,” Irnic went on, “but of Cantanabria our neighbour. They represented only themselves. Of that we made sure-we have no official quarrel with Cantanabria. Was they, Cormac, who sought to do murder on ye, that day in the meadow. On Lucanor’s orders.”

“Gladness is on me to know that,” Cormac said, for he’d liked not the thought that some of Galicia abhorred him for a reiver so much as to try to do murder on him. “And what of Lucanor himself, Irnic?”

Irnic lurched up from his seat and paced away. He whirled to face them, his back to a multi-hued eastern tapestry. His face worked.

“Lucanor escaped. He vanished. Nay, wait and give listen. There were-there are but two means of entering and leaving that temple. We entered through both at once, and left men outside, too. Yet Lucanor stabbed my man who sought to arrest him, there beside the very altar where the child’s blood still dripped. Then he whirled and fled into a dark niche behind the altar, with his damned blood-red robe and black cloak flapping like a great bat. And then he was not there. Nor did he leave by either door, for men waited outside. They could not have missed the emergence of a mouse.”

“Did ye sound the walls of that niche?” Wulfhere asked.

“Of course. We ‘sounded’ them-with hammers! Solid stone, like the rest of that temple. And ask me not about the floor; it contains no trap door.”

Cormac gritted his teeth. Lucanor gone, escaped, and he had surely initiated the cult and roused the creatures of Cthulhu and… more? He wondered, for a question remained unasked. Meanwhile, he rearranged his mind. Zarabdas, with his strange name that seemed sinister to western ears… a friend and good man who practiced his magicks only on his king’s command. Lucanor, healer with the name of that healer who was said to have followed the Dead God… he was a black magician, a priest or helpful servant of a foul god from off this plane; a murderer of children and misleader of peasants; a practitioner of foul arts who had recruited-

“Ah. And… what of… that woman of whom we spoke earlier, Irnic?”

“Zarabdas knows, Cormac.”

Wulfhere said, “I fault ye not for telling me, Wolf. But I too know of Queen Venhilda’s peregrinations-by-night.”

“Well, what of her?” Cormac demanded without patience. Yet he feared the reply, for he liked Veremund, for all that he was a king.

Irnic heaved a mighty sigh and spoke without pride or happiness.

“She was seen to leave the King’s Hall. She was seen to enter the old temple. And she did not depart. Yet she was not among the cultists, nor of course is she now.”

“By the Morrighu-not with Lucanor, in Behl’s name?”

Irnic shook his head. “Nay, Cormac. I said it: she was not in the temple when we entered. But there, before the altar, the cloak she had worn… was.”

After a long while of brooding silence, four unhappy men began to discuss sadly how much should be told the king. All, they eventually decided.

The reactions and emotions of the King of the Suevi-become-Galicii were mixed. Others were joyous at the news; Veremund was of course pleased at the removal of the murdering sea menace, and even at the discovery and crushing of the cult, for he was king and the tower of death become only a light-tower again. Yet he was skeptical of the full report, and silent.

Cormac knew the man was fearful of the answer that must be a loud voice in his royal brain: Where was Queen Venhilda?

Mac Art slept, and alone, and wondered if Veremund, alone, slept.

Whether or no, the king was up and looking the king on the morrow, with congratulatory words for Cormac and Wulfhere. Too, he would insist on riding down to the shore with them, to see what remained of their triumph, and to survey coastal waters made safe for his realm and its visitors.

So they did. The tower now seemed bright and cheery, container of a beacon to guide seamen in to a shore eager for trade. Yet they found that which was far from pleasant.

Of craft or creatures there remained no sign asea, as though that god from another plane had sucked all down to his drowned kingdom, even in sleep. Yet the tide had brought in an ugly reminder of the battle, and proof of all.

The sea-creature lay on a spit of sand, washed in and abandoned by the tide. It was as hideous in death as it had been in life, and the spear Cormac had hurled still transfixed it. Nor was there any preventing Veremund from seeing: this frog-fish-human creature wore two pieces of jewellery.

Around its almost nonexistent neck glittered a chain supporting the figure of an anthropomorphic yet hardly human creature whose head sprouted tentacles. Though less exotic, the other piece of jewellery, a ring, was more spectacular. Above the joint of a claw-tipped finger, the ring bore a fine prodigious stone that glittered and winked in the morning sunlight. A huge opal it was, besprint within by many flecks of a half-dozen colours.

Veremund stood slump-shouldered, though Cormac knew that the king had known no love for his changed, pallid wife for a year or more, and had no love of her. And too, he had lately consoled himself with Clodia, probably the finest event to befall him since his coronation.

“This… thing,” the king mumbled, “slew my beloved Venhilda and wears even her own favourite ring.”

That she had of Lucanor, Cormac thought, who could not cure her… of a “disease” he brought on, seeking to create a changeling queen of monsters? But he saw the tense faces of Zarabdas and Irnic, and their eyes bright on him, and he sighed… and nodded.

“Aye, so it must have been. Pride is on me to have taken vengeance for yourself, lord King.”

Cormac did not believe his own words. Vengeance? In a way-but Lucanor was gone, alive, escaped-and the queen was surely dead, of Cormac’s hand.

Though he could not be certain, it seemed hideously likely that Lucanor, while he “tended” the queen, had used his magical wiles and connection to a monster-god of old on her. The result was this ugly creature lying dead on the sand. She never blinked, Cormac mac Art remembered. Because she was changing! Losing her humanity; taking on fishlike qualities and traits. And last night, her cloak alone remained of her in the temple. Perhaps because with a final arcane rite and blood-sacrifice, Venhilda had been fully transformed… only to die among other monsters at the hand of a man in her husband’s employ?

Standing beside the king in the bright sunlight, mac Art could be certain of none of his surmising. But he knew that all of it was probable.

Unconsciously touching the bit of jewellery out of Egypt that he uncharacteristically wore for some reason he could not name, Cormac gazed at another sigil on its chain. It circled the neck of the dead monster he and Irnic and Zarabdas and Wulfhere knew full well had been Queen of the Galicians.

“Kraken,” Wulfhere said, staring at that same sigil with its tentacle-sprouting head.

“Nay,” Zarabdas of Palmyra said. “This is a representation of the ancient demon in the world since its birth… Cthulhu, he who awaits asleep in his house in sunken R’lyeh.” Almost dreamily, Zarabdas spoke on: “When last this demon stirred in his sleep, the world shook and rocked and the oceans drowned land-masses larger than all this Hispania we stand on. No nation but has tales left it of the Great Flood. The kraken… ah! The kraken are but his remote get, his time-enfeebled spawn. And if ever he should awake again, it will be horror on the earth again, and…”

“Ragnarok,” Wulfhere muttered. “The twilight of the gods… and men.”