Haggopian and Other Stories

Curse of the Golden Guardians

My “Primal Land” trilogy is set in a forgotten prehistoric Age of Man when Ma Nature hasn’t yet decided what talents men should or should not have: an age of wizards and weirdlings! The semi-barbarian Tarra Khash is an itinerant Hrossak, an adventurous steppesman whose wanderings carry him far and wide across the Primal Land. In that most ancient period our Earth was that much closer to Cthulhu’s era; the facts of His being were not nearly so esoteric; indeed certain of the darker mages of the era studied Him and His legends most assiduously, especially in their quest for immortality. They even built temples to Cthulhu and others of His cycle, some of which—like the tombs of the Pharaohs in far more recent times—were lost. In “Curse of the Golden Guardians”, Tarra Khash comes across just such a place, and then meets up with the ones who watch over it. The Primal Land tales were written in the early 1980s, this one in February 1984. W. Paul Ganley’s Weirdbook Press first published it, in Vol. 1 of The Compleat Khash (1991) along with five other stories.

Thin to the point of emaciation and burned almost black by a pitiless sun, Tarra Khash came out of the Nameless Desert into dawn-grey, forbidding foothills which, however inarticulate, nevertheless spoke jeeringly of a once exact sense of direction addled by privation and dune blindness. For those misted peaks beyond the foothills could only be the southern tip of the Mountains of Lohmi, which meant that the Hrossak had been travelling a little north of due east, and not as he had intended south-east toward his beloved and long-forsaken steppes.

Another might have cursed at sight of those distantly looming spires of rock in the pale morning light, but Tarra Khash was a true Hrossak for all his wanderlust and not much given to bemoaning his fate. Better to save his breath and use the time taking stock and planning afresh. Indeed, it could well prove providential that he had stumbled this way instead of that, for here at least there was water, and an abundance of it if his ears played him not false. Surely that was the thunder of a cataract he heard?—Aye, and just as surely his desiccated nostrils seemed to suck at air suddenly moist and sweet as the breath of his own mother, as opposed to the desert’s arid, acrid exhalations.

Water, yes!—and Tarra licked his parched lips.

Moreover, where there’s water there are beasts to drink it, fish to swim in it and frogs to croak in the rushes at its rim; and birds to prey upon frogs and fishes both. But even as thoughts such as these brought a grin to haggard Hrossak features, others, following hard and fast upon their heels, fetched on a frown. What he envisioned was nothing less than an oasis, and never a one-such without its lawful (or often as not unlawful) masters and protectors. Mountain men, probably, well known for their brute natures; or polyglot nomads from the desert, settled here in what to them must surely be a land of plenty.

Or…or perhaps he made too much of a mere sound, a touch of moisture in the morning air. For after all he had ventured here by chance; perchance he was the first such to venture here. Still, better safe than sorry.

Tarra had several small sacks of gold tethered to a thong about his waist. Other than these he wore a loincloth and carried a scabbard slung diagonally across his back, in which was fixed the jewelled hilt of a curved ceremonial sword; but just the hilt and a few inches of blade, for the rest had been shivered to shards in battle. Tarra kept the broken sword not for its value as a weapon but for the jewels in its hilt, which were worth a small fortune and therefore held high barter value. A man could buy his life many times over with those gemstones. Moreover, anyone seeing that hilt stuck in its scabbard would picture an entire sword there, and a Hrossak with a scimitar has always been a force to be reckoned with.

Jewels and gold both, however, might well prove too much of a temptation, for which reason Tarra now removed the sacklets from their thong and buried them beside an oddly carved rock. That was better; few men would risk their necks for a sweaty breech-clout, and scarcer still one who’d attempt the removal of a man’s personal weapon!

And so Tarra climbed rocks and escarpments toward sound of rushing water and taste of spray, and along the way ate a lizard he killed with a rock, until after half a mile an oft-glimpsed glimmer and sparkle was grown to a shining spout of water descending from a high, sheer cliff. By then, too, the sun was up, and the way grown with grasses however coarse and bushes of thorn, then flowers and a scattering of trees with small fruits, and some with carobs and others with nuts. Here a small bird sang, and there the coarse grasses rustled, and somewhere a wild piglet squealed as it rooted in soil now loamy. A place of plenty indeed, and as yet no signs of Man or of his works, unless—

—Unless that was firesmoke Tarra’s eager nostrils suspicioned, and a moment later more than suspicioned: the tangy reek of a wood fire, and the mouthwatering aroma of pork with its juices dripping and sputtering on smoking, red-glowing embers.

By all that was good!—sweet pork for breakfast, and a pool of clear water to draw the sting from sandpapered skin and soothe the stiffness from creaking joints. Tarra went more swiftly now, lured on irresistibly; and yet he went with caution, until at last he reached the rim of a great bowl-like depression in a wide terrace of rock beneath beetling cliffs. And there, lying flat upon his belly, he slowly craned forth his neck until the cataract-carved pool below, and its sandy margins, lay visible in every aspect to his desert-weary eyes. And a sight for sore eyes it was:

The pool was round as a young girl’s navel, and its waters clear and sparkly as her blue eyes. Fish there were in small shoals that Tarra could plainly see, and reeds along one curve of bank, giving way to a species of wide, low-hanging willow which grew in a clump where the rock was cleft. And there sat one who looked like an old man half-in, half-out of the sweet green shade, at his feet a fire whose smoke rose near vertical to the sky, except where gusts of spume from the waterfall caused it to eddy.

Even as Tarra watched, the old man (if such he was) baited a hook and tossed it on a line into the pool, where fish at once came speeding to investigate. The Hrossak glanced back over one shoulder, then the other. Nothing back there: the foothills and mountains on one hand, the shimmering desert on the other. And between the two this hidden pool, or rather this lake, for certainly the basin was a big one. He relaxed; he scanned the scene again; his mouth watered at the delicious, drifting odour of roasting meat. Down below a fish took the hook, was hauled in a frenzy of flexing body and flash of scales dripping from the water. It joined several more where they glittered silver in a shallow hole close to where the old man sat. He baited his hook again, turned the spit, swigged from a wineskin. Tarra could stand no more.

Here the descent would be too steep; he would break a leg or even his neck; but over there, close to where the waterfall plunged and turned the lake to milk, were rounded terraces or ledges like steps cut in the rock, and projecting boulders for handholds. No problem…

He wriggled back from the rim, stood up, loped around the edge of the bowl toward the waterfall. Almost there he stopped, used his broken sword’s scant inches of blade to cut a bow, strung it with the thong from his middle. Two straight, slender stems for flightless arrows—crude but effective at short range—and he was ready. Except…

It is never a wise move to come upon a man suddenly, when he may well be shocked into precipitous and possibly violent reaction. Tarra went to the head of the water-carved steps, leaned casually upon a great boulder and called down, “Halloo, there!”

The basin took up his call, adding it to the thunder of plummeting waters: “Halloo, there—halloo, halloo, halloo—there, there, there!”

Down below the lone fisherman scrambled to his feet, saw Tarra Khash making his way down slippery terraces of stone toward him. Tarra waved and, however uncertainly, the man by the pool waved back. “Welcome!” he called up in a tremulous croak. “Welcome, stranger…”

Tarra was half-way down. He paused, yelled: “Be at your ease, friend. I smelled your meat and it aroused a small hunger in me, that’s all. I’ll not beg from you though, but merely borrow your hook, if I may, and catch a bite of my own.”

“No need, no need at all,” the other croaked at once, seemingly reassured. “There’s more than enough here for both of us. A suckling pig and a skin of wine…which way have you come? It’s a strange place for wanderers, and that’s no lie!”

Tarra was down. Stepping forward he said, “Across the Nameless Desert—which is just a smidgeon dusty this time of year!” He gave his head a shake and dust formed a drifting cloud about his shoulders. “See?”

“Sit, sit!” the other invited, fully at his ease now. “You’ll be hungry as well as thirsty. Come, take a bite to eat and a swig of sweet wine.”

“I say gladly to both!” answered Tarra Khash. “But right now, the sweetest thing I can imagine is a dip in these crystal waters. What?—I could drink the lake dry! It’ll take but a moment.” He tossed his makeshift bow and arrows down, stepped to pool’s rim. The scabbard and hilt of sword stayed where they were, strapped firmly to his back.

“Careful, son!” the oldster cautioned, his voice like dry dice rattling in a cup—but the Hrossak was already mid-dive, his body knifing deep in cool, cleansing waters. “Careful!” came the warning again as his head broke the surface. “Don’t swim out too far. The water whirls toward the middle and will drag you down quick as that!” He snapped his fingers.

Tarra laughed, swilled out his gritty mouth, turned on his back and spouted like a whale. But the oldster was right: already he could feel the tug of a strong current. He headed for the shelf, called: “Peace! I’ve no lust for swimming, which seems to me a fruitless exercise at best. No, but the dust was so thick on me I grew weary from carrying it around! Ho!” And he hauled himself from the water.

A moment later, seated on opposite sides of the fire, each silently appraised the other. The old man—a civilized man by his looks, what Tarra could see of them; possibly out of Klühn, though what such as he could want here the Hrossak found hard to guess—was blocky turning stout, short of stature and broken of voice. He wore loose brown robes that flowed in the nomad fashion, cowled to keep the sun from his head. Beneath that cowl rheumy grey eyes gazed out from behind a veil of straggling white hair; they were deep-set in a face much seamed and weathered. His hands were gnarled, too, and his calves and feet withered and grey where he shuffled his open leather sandals to scuff at the pebbles. Oh, he was a grandfather, little doubt, and yet—

Tarra found himself distracted as the other teased a smoking chunk of pork as big as his fist from the spit and passed it over the fire on a sharp stick. “Eat,” he growled. “The Nameless Desert is no friend to an empty belly.”

Feeling the sun steaming water from his back, Tarra wolfed at the meat, gazed out over the lake, dangled a toe languidly in its water. And while he munched on crisp crackling and tore at soft flesh, so the other studied him.

A Hrossak, plainly, who beneath his blisters and cracked skin would be bronze as the great gongs in the temples of Khrissa’s ice-priests. Not much known for guile, these men of the steppes, which was to say that they were generally a trustworthy lot. Indeed, it was of olden repute in Klühn that if a Hrossak befriends you he’s your friend for life. On the other hand, best not to cross one. Not unless you could be sure of getting away with it…

The old man checked Tarra over most minutely:

Standing, he’d be a tall one, this Hrossak, and despite his current leanness his muscles rippled beneath sun- and sand-tortured skin. Hair a shiny, tousled brown (now that dust and dirt were washed away) and eyes of a brown so deep that it was almost black; long arms and legs, and shoulders broad as those of any maned and murderous northern barbarian; strong white teeth set in a wide, ofttimes laughing mouth—aye, he was a handsome specimen, this steppeman—but doubtless as big a fool as any. Or if not yet a fool, then shortly.

“Hadj Dyzm,” he informed now, “sole survivor of a caravan out of Eyphra.We had almost made it through a mountain pass and were headed for Chlangi—our planned watering place, you understand—on our way to Klühn. Mountain scum ambushed us in the eastern foothills. I played dead, as did two others…” (Tarra, still munching, glanced quickly about and to the rear, his keen eyes missing nothing.) Dyzm nodded: “Oh yes, there were three of us, myself and two young bucks.” Tarra could almost taste him biting his lip. Well, he wouldn’t pry. The old man could keep his secrets. Anyway, it was easier to change the subject.

“Khash,” he said.”Tarra, to my friends. I’m heading for Hrossa—or should be! Now—I suppose I’ll rest up here for a day or two, then get on my way again. Go with me if you will, or is your aim still set on Chlangi the Doomed?”

The other shrugged. “Undecided. Chlangi is a place of brigands, I’m told, and your Hrossa is likewise somewhat…wild?”

“You’d be safe enough with me, and there’s sea trade with Klühn—though not much, I’ll admit. Again, I’ve been away for many a year; relations may well have improved. One thing’s certain: if a man can pay his way, then he’s welcome in Hrossa.”

“Pay my way!” The other laughed gratingly.”Oh, I can do that all right. I could even pay you—to be my protection on the way to Chlangi—if you were of a mind.” He dipped into his robes and came out with several nuggets of gold, each big as a man’s thumb.

Tarra blinked.”Then you’re a rich merchant, Hadj Dyzm, or at any rate a man of means! Well, I wish I could be of assistance. But no, I believe it’s Hrossa for me. I’ll think it over, though.”

Dyzm nodded. “Fair enough!” he barked in that strange rough voice. “And in my turn I shall give some thought to your own kind offer. But let me say this: of all my treasure—of the veritable lumps of gold which are mine—those nuggets I have shown you are the merest motes. For your help I would pay you ten, nay twenty times what you have seen!”

“Ware, man!” Tarra cautioned. “Men have been killed for a toothful! Speak not of lumps—at least not so carelessly!” It was a true statement and a sobering thought.

They sat in silence then, eating their fill for a long while, until the pork was finished and the wineskin empty. By then, too, the sun was riding high in a sky so blue it hurt, and Tarra was weary nigh unto death.

“I’m for sleeping,” he finally said.”I’ll be happy to find you here when I awaken, Hadj Dyzm, and if you are gone I’ll not forget you. Peace.”

Then he climbed to a shady ledge almost certainly inaccessible to the oldster, and with a single half-speculative glance at Dyzm where he sat in the shade of the willows below, and another out across the glittery pool, he settled himself down to sleep…

II

Tarra Khash was not much given to dreaming, but now he dreamed. Nor was his dream typical, for he was not a greedy man; and yet he dreamed of gold.

Gold, and a great deal of it. Heaps of it, ruddily reflecting the flickering light of a torch held high in Tarra’s trembling fist. Trembling, aye, for the dream was not a pleasurable thing but a nightmare, and the treasure cave where the dreaming Hrossak waded ankle deep in bright dust not merely a cave but—

—A tomb!

The tomb of Tarra Khash! And as behind him its great stone slab of a door pivoted, shutting him in forever—

—Tarra came awake in a moment, jerking bolt upright with hoarse cry and banging his head on jutting rim of rock whose bulk had kept the sun from him. But now…the sun already three parts down the sky and shadows stretching; and already the chill of evening in the air, where overhead kites wheeled against a blue degrees darker, their keen eyes alert for carrion; and the great pool grey now where it lay in the shade of the basin, and the spray from the cataract a veil of milk drifting above the fall.

Tarra lay down again, fingering his skull. He shivered, not so much from chilly flesh as a chill of the spirit. A dream such as that one were surely ill-omened, whose portent should not be ignored. Tarra touched his bump again and winced, then grinned however ruefully. What? A Hrossak full-grown and troubled by a dream? Terrors enough in this primal land without

conjuring more from surfeit of swine-flesh!

“Ho!” came a gritty, coughing shout from below.”Did you call me? I was sleeping.”

Tarra cloaked himself in his wits and sat up—this time more carefully, “I wondered if you were still there,” he called down. “I couldn’t see you in the shade of your tree, and the fire appears to be dead.”

“What?” Hadj Dyzm came from cover, stretched and yawned. He poked for a moment at dull embers, then snorted a denial. “No, not dead but sleeping like us. There—” and he propped a dry branch over hot ashes. By the time Tarra had climbed stiffly down, smoke was already curling.

“Fish for supper,” said Dyzm. “If I may depend on you to see to it, I’ll go tend my beasts.”

“Beasts?” Tarra was surprised. “Beasts of burden? Here?” He stared hard at the other in the dying light. “You said nothing of this before. Things take a turn for the better!”

“Listen,” said Dyzm. “While you slept I thought things over. I’ve a tale to tell and a proposition to make. I’ll do both when I get back. Now, will you see to the fish?”

“Certainly!” the Hrossak answered, kneeling to blow a tiny flame to life. “Beasts of burden, hey? And now maybe I’ll reconsider your offer—my protection, I mean, en route for Chlangi—for it’s a shorter way by far to the so-called Doomed City by yak, than it is to the steppes on foot! And truth to tell, my feet are sore weary of—” But Hadj Dyzm was no longer there. Humped up a little and wheezing, he made his way carefully upward, from one rock terrace to the next higher; and he needed his wind for breathing, not chattering to a suddenly gossipy Hrossak.

Tarra, however, chattered only for effect: chiefly to hide his hurried re-appraisal of this “stranded merchant”. Stranded, indeed! How so? With beasts of burden at his command? There were deep waters here for sure, and not alone in this crystal pool!

Using his broken blade the Hrossak quickly gutted the fishes, spitted them together on a green stick and set it over the stinging smoke, then checked on Dyzm’s progress up the side of the bowl. And…he could climb surprisingly well, this old man! Already he was at the rim, just disappearing over the top. Tarra let him get right out of sight, then sprang to his feet and raced up the terraces. At the top he followed Dyzm’s trail beneath the cliffs to where the water came down in a near-solid sheet from above, its shining tongue lunging sheer down the slippery face of the rock. No need for stealth here, where the thunder of the fall deadened all else to silence.

Then he spotted the oldster, but—

On the other side of the fall? Now how had he managed to get across? And so speedily! The old fellow was full of surprises, and doubtless there were more to come; Tarra must try to anticipate them.

He watched from the shelter of a leaning rock, his gaze half-obscured by rising spray from the lake. Dyzm’s animals were not yaks but two pairs of small camels, which he now tended in the pale evening light. Tethered to a tree in the lee of the cliff, three of them had saddles and small bags, the other was decked more properly as a pack animal. Dyzm put down a large bundle of green branches and coarse grasses collected along the way and the camels at once commenced to feed. While they did so, the old man checked their saddlebags. And furtive was old Hadj Dyzm as he went about his checking, with many a glance over his brown-robed shoulders, which seemed a little less humped now and, oddly, less venerable. But perhaps that was only an effect of the misty light…

Keeping low and melding with the lengthening shadows, Tarra retraced his steps to the bowl, down the terraces to the lake, and was just in time to keep the fishes from ruin as the fire’s flames blazed higher. So that a short while later, when Dyzm returned, supper was ready and the fire crackled a bright yellow welcome, its light reflecting in the water along with night’s first stars.

Seeing that all was well, Dyzm handed Tarra a blanket he’d brought back with him from his camel-tending; Tarra threw it gratefully across his shoulders, drawing it to him like a robe. Hunching down, they ate in silence; and then, with the last rays of the sun glancing off the western rim of the bowl, the old man shoved a little more wood on the fire and began to talk:

“Tarra Khash, I like you and believe that you’re a trustworthy man. Most steppemen are, individually. Oh, it’s true I know little enough about you, but we’ve eaten together and talked a little, and you’ve given me no cause to suspect that you’re anything but a right-minded, fair-dealing, strong-limbed and hardy Hrossak. Which are all the qualifications you need to be my partner. Hear me out:

“If you hadn’t come on the scene when you did—indeed, only half an hour later—then I’d have been long gone from here and even now on my way to Klühn via Chlangi, and to all the many hells with trail brigands and bandits! And fifty-fifty I would make it unscathed, for I’m a survivor, d’you see? Not that I’d normally complain, even if I didn’t make it: a man has a life to live and when it’s done it’s done. Being a Hrossak, you’d agree with that, I know.

“Ah! But that’s a poor man’s philosophy, Tarra Khash—the philosophy of defeat. For a poor man has nothing to lose, and what’s life itself but a burdensome, lingering thing? When a man becomes rich, however, his viewpoint changes. And the richer he becomes, the greater the change. Which tells you this: that since coming here I have grown rich. So rich that I am no longer willing to risk a fifty-fifty chance of hying myself to Chlangi all in one piece. Aye, for what’s wealth if you’re not alive to enjoy it?

“Wait!—let me say on. Now, I can see your first question writ clear across your face. It is this: how, by what means, have I, Hadj Dyzm, a poor man all my life, suddenly grown wealthy? Well, this much I’ll tell you—” He brought out a weighty saddlebag from beneath his robe, spread the hem of Tarra’s blanket over the smooth rock, tipped out contents of bag.

Tarra’s jaw dropped and his eyes opened wide, reflecting the glow and glitter and gleam of the heap of gold and jade and jewels which now lay scintillant in the fire’s flickering. And: “By all that’s—” he gasped, stretching forth a hand. But before his fingers could touch, Dyzm grasped them in his own wrinkled paw.

“Hold!” he cautioned again. “Wait! You have not heard all. This is but a twelfth part of it. Eleven more bags there are, where this one came from. Aye, and an hundred, a thousand times more where they came from!”

“Treasure trove!” Tarra hissed. “You’ve found a cache!”

“Shh!” said Dyzm sharply. “A cache? A hoard? Treasure long lost and buried in the desert’s drifting sands?” Slowly he shook his head. “Nay, lad, more than that. I have discovered the tombs of a line of ancient kings, who in their time were wont to take with them to the grave all the treasures gathered up in all the days of their long, long lives!” And chuckling hoarsely, he patted Tarra’s knee through the blanket.

The tombs of kings! Treasures beyond avarice! Tarra’s head whirled with the sudden greed, the poisonous lust he felt pulsing in his veins—until a cooling breeze blew upon his brain from dark recesses of memory. In his mind’s eye he saw a huge slab of stone pivoting to block a portal, heard the shuddering reverberations as that massive door slammed immovably into place, felt the weight of a million tons of rock and sand pressing down on him, keeping him from the blessed air and light.

He drew back his hand and stopped licking his lips. His eyes narrowed and he stared hard at Hadj Dyzm.

The oldster gave a harsh, hoarse chuckle. “That’s a rare restraint you show, lad. Don’t you want to touch it?”

“Aye,” Tarra nodded. “Touch it? I’d like to wash my face in it!—but not until you’ve told me where it comes from.”

“Ho-ho!” cried Dyzm. “What? But we haven’t settled terms yet!”

Again Tarra nodded. “Well, since you’re so good at it, let’s hear what you’ve to say. What are your terms?”

Dyzm stroked his gnarly chin. “The way I see it, with you along especially in Chlangi my chances for survival go up from fifty-fifty to, oh, say three out of four?”

“Go on.”

“So let’s settle for that. For your protection I’ll pay you one fourth part of all I’ve got.”

Tarra sat back, frowned. “That doesn’t sound much of a partnership

to me.”

Dyzm chuckled, low and throaty. “Lad, these are early days. After all, we can only take so much with us—this time!”

Tarra began to understand. “As I prove myself—that is, as you continue to survive, which with my protection you will—so my percentage will improve; is that it?”

“Exactly! We’ll return—trip after trip until the vaults are emptied—by which time you’ll be earning a full half-share and there’ll be men enough in our employ to keep all the brigands in Theem’hdra at bay!”

“But where are these vaults you speak of?” Tarra asked, and got exactly the answer he’d expected.

“Man, if I told you that at this juncture…why, what need of me would you have then? Anyway, the vaults are impossible to find; I myself found them only by dint of sheerest accident. Aye, and I have sealed up the hole again, so that it’s now doubly impossible.”

Tarra grinned, however mirthlessly. “It would seem,” he said, “for all your high opinion of Hrossaks, that this one is only trustworthy up to a point!”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life,” Dyzm answered, “it’s this: that all men are trustworthy—up to a point.” He pointed at the fortune nestling in the corner of Tarra’s blanket, tossed down the saddlebag. “But keep them,” he said.”Why not? And take them up with you to your ledge to sleep the night, where a poor old lad with a pot belly and bandy legs can’t reach you and choke your life out in the dark. But don’t talk to me of trust and mistrust, Tarra Khash…”

Tarra reddened but said nothing. Truth to tell, old Dyzm’s arrow had struck home: the Hrossak had taken his precautions before sleeping, and he’d done a fair bit of suspicioning, too. (Only thank goodness the old fox hadn’t seen him following him, else were there a real tongue-lashing in the offing!)

At any rate Tarra said no more, nor old Dyzm, and after sitting awhile in silence they each began to make their arrangements for the night. The Hrossak found himself a smooth hollow in the stone close by—but far enough away from spouting water to be bone dry, and still retaining the sun’s heat—and there curled up in his blanket. Hadj Dyzm retired yawning to an arbor in the willows, rustling about a bit amongst the branches until settled. Only then, before sleeping, was there more talk, and brief at that:

“When do you want my answer?” Tarra softly called in the night.

“Tomorrow at latest—else by noon I move on alone. But for goodwill, if that’s what you seek, keep that saddlebag anyway—if only to remind you of a once-in-a-lifetime chance missed. You have a molehill; you could have a mountain.”

And on that they settled down, except…neither one slept.

III

For Tarra it was like this: the old man had seemingly dealt with him fairly, and yet still something—many things, perhaps—bothered him. The yellowish texture of Dyzm’s wrinkled skin, for instance, though why simple signs of age and infirmity should bother Tarra he couldn’t imagine. And the old boy’s voice, croaking like Khrissan crotala. A disease, maybe? His name, too: for “Hadj Dyzm” as name was more likely found attached to a man of cold Khrissa or Eyphra, and men of those parts rarely stray. They are rigidly cold, such men, brittle as the ice which winters down on them from the Great Ice Barrier and across the Chill Sea. And merchants they scarcely ever are, who by their natures are self-sufficient. And yet this one, at his time of life, alleged a longing for Klühn, city of sophisticates, warm in the winter and the temperate currents of the Eastern Ocean even as Khrissa in mid-summer. Or perhaps, weary of ice and frozen wastes, Dyzm would simply see out his life there, dotage-indulgent of luxuries and soft sea strands?

But what of the two who’d fled the beleaguered caravan with him? Old Dyzm had mentioned precious little of them, and had seemed to regret even that! Anyway, if he were so enamoured of Klühn (via Chlangi) why come this way around the southern tip of Lohmi’s mountains, in precisely the wrong direction in the first place?

Lastly, why show Tarra any of his treasure? Why not simply make him a decent offer for his assistance in crossing unscathed the badlands twixt here and Chlangi, and thence to Klühn? Surely that were wisest…

These were the thoughts which kept Tarra awake, but Hadj Dyzm’s were something else. For where the Hrossak’s were vague, curious, inquiring things, Dyzm’s were cunning-sharp and dire indeed. At any rate, he had not long settled before stirring, however furtively, and rising up in the night like a hunched blot on rocks white in the moonlight. Then, pausing only to listen to Tarra’s deep breathing and so ensure he slept (which still he did not, and which Dyzm knew well enough), the old man made his way up the terraces and quickly became one with the shadows.

Tarra watched him go through slitted eyes, then replaced his sword-stump in its scabbard, rose up and followed silently behind. And no hesitation this time, no feeling of guilt or question of “trust” to bother his mind. No, for his thoughts on Hadj Dyzm had commenced to come together, and the puzzle was beginning to take on form. How the last pieces of that puzzle would fall into place, Tarra could not yet say, but he had an idea that his immediate future—perhaps his entire future—might depend upon it.

Straight to the waterfall went Hadj Dyzm’s shadow in the night, with that of Hrossak fleeting not too far behind; so that this time Tarra saw the old man pass behind that shining spout of water, his back to the cliff, feet shuffling along a projecting ledge, and so out of sight. Tarra waited for long moments, but no sign of the oldster emerging from the other side. The Hrossak scratched impatiently at an itch on his shoulder, scuffed his feet and adjusted the scabbard across his back. Still no sign of Hadj.

Taking jewelled hilt of sword with its precious inches of steel in hand, finally Tarra ventured onto the ledge and behind the fall—and saw at once whereto the wily old tomb-looter had disappeared. Behind the fall, hollowed by water’s rush through untold centuries, a moist cavern reached back into forbidding gloom. But deep within was light, where a flickering torch sputtered in a bracket fixed to the wall. Tarra went to the torch and found others prepared where they lay in a dry niche. Taking one up and holding it to the flame until it caught sputtering life of its own, he followed a trail of footprints in the dust of the floor, moving ever deeper into the heart of the cliff. And always ahead a coil of blue smoke hanging in the musty air, by which he was doubly sure that Dyzm had passed this way.

Now the passage grew narrow, then wider; here it was high-ceilinged, there low; but as the light of the flambeau behind him grew fainter and fainter with distance, until a bend shut it off entirely, and as Tarra burrowed deeper and deeper, so he became aware of more than the work of nature here, where ever increasingly the walls were carved with gods and demons, with stalactites cut in the likenesses of kings and queens seated upon dripstone thrones. A gallery of the gods, this place—of an entire mythology long-forgotten, or almost forgotten—and of them that worshipped, or used to worship, the Beings of that paleogaean pantheon.

Tarra gave an involuntary shudder as he crept silently twixt grinning gargoyles and doomful demons, past looming, tentacled krakens and pschent-crowned, wide-mouthed things not so much men as long-headed lizards; and it was here, coming round a second bend in the passage and suddenly into a great terminal chamber, that he reached the very heart of this secret, once-sacred place.

Or was it the heart?

For here—where the ceiling reached up beyond the limits of torchlight, from which unsighted dome massy, morbidly carven daggers of rock depended, and where the stalagmites formed flattened pedestals now for teratological grotesques beyond the Hrossak’s staggered imagination—here the footprints in the dust led directly to a central area where blazed another faggot, this one thrust callously into the talon of a staring stone man-lizard. And at this idol’s clawed feet lay more bound bundles of dry wood, their knobs all coated with pitch.

Tarra lit a second torch and followed Dyzm’s trail a few paces more, to the exact center of the chamber. Which was where the trail ended—or rather, descended!

Between the twin stalagmite thrones of winged, tentacled krakens (images of loathly Lord Cthulhu, Tarra knew from olden legends of his homeland) steps cut from the very rock commenced what seemed a dizzy spiral dive into unknown bowels of earth. And up from that yawning pit came the reek of Dyzm’s torch, and from vaults unguessed came clatter of pebbles inadvertently dislodged.

Now Tarra knew at this stage that he had come far enough. He felt it in his water: common sense advising that he now retrace his steps. But to what end? No use now to plead ignorance of the oldster’s secret, for certes Dyzm would note the absence or use of two of his tarry torches. And anyway, ’twas curiosity had led the Hrossak on, not greed for more than he’d been offered. In no way did he wish any harm upon the other (not at this stage of the adventure, anyway), but by the same token he saw no good reason why he should remain, as it were, in the dark in respect of the subterranean treasure vaults. Also he desired to know why, in the dead of night, any man should require to venture down into this place. What was it that lured the oldster? More treasure? But surely there would be time enough for that later? Alas, Tarra failed to take into account the greed of some men, which is limitless. To them those fabulous regions “Beyond the Dreams of Avarice” do not exist!

And so he set foot upon the first step, then the second, and by yellow light of flaring brand descended but not very far. At the end of a single steep twist the corkscrew ended in a smaller chamber, where once again two stony sons of Cthulhu sat facing each other this time across a circular shaft whose sides fell smooth and sheer into darkness. And here, too, some curious machinery: a drum of rope with pulleys, a winding handle and large copper bucket, all made fast to the weighty pedestal of one of the Cthulhu images. And tied to the other pedestal, a rope ladder whose rungs went down into gloom. Tarra peered over the rim and saw down there at some indeterminate depth the flickering light of Hadj Dyzm’s torch.

Now the Hrossak examined the rope ladder more carefully, and satisfied himself that it was made of pretty stout stuff. Seating himself on the rim of the shaft, he leaned his weight on the ladder’s rungs and they supported him effortlessly. He began to lower himself and paused.

Again that niggling mini-Tarra, the one that dwelled in the back of his mind, was whispering cautionary things to him. But cautioning of what? If an old man dared venture here at this hour, surely there could be little of any real danger here? Tarra silenced the frantic whisperer in his head and peered about.

Seated there at pit’s rim, he aimed his torch in all directions. There were unexplored niches and recesses in the walls here, true, and also he had this sensation of hooded eyes, of something watching. But how possibly? By whom, watched? These stony idols, perhaps! And Tarra snorted his abrupt dismissal of the idea. At any rate, Hadj Dyzm was below, as witness the flare of his torch. Ah, well, only one thing for it—

And clenching the thin end of the faggot between his teeth, he once more set feet to rope rungs and began to descend. Up until which time, Tarra had not erred…

The flue swiftly widened out, like the neck of a jar, and at a count of only thirty rungs Tarra touched floor. There was the torch he had seen from above, guttering now on this cavern’s floor, but of Hadj Dyzm—

The Hrossak stood with one hand on the ladder and turned in a slow circle, holding high his torch. Over there…more statues of Cthulhu and others of his pantheon. And over here…an open box carved from solid rock, its heaped contents spilling over onto the floor. But such contents!

Tarra stepped as in a dream toward that fabulous hoard, and reaching it heard Dyzm’s hoarse, echoing chuckle—from above!

He fell into a crouch, spun on his heel, leaped back toward the ladder—in time to see it whisked up, out of sight. And more important, far out of reach. So that now Tarra knew how sorely he’d been fooled, and how surely he was trapped.

“Hrossak?” came Dyzm’s guttural query from overhead. “You, Tarra Khash—do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, trustworthy one!” Tarra almost choked on the words.

“Then hearken awhile,” the other chortled, “and I’ll tell you all the tale, for I’ve seen what a curious lad you are and I’m sure you’ll be enthralled.”

“By all means,” Tarra growled. “Why, you might say I’m a captive audience!” And he too laughed, but a trifle bitterly.

“In all truth,” said Dyzm, “I really did come out of Eyphra with a caravan—but of sheerest necessity, I assure you. Mayhap you’ve heard of the sulphur pits twixt Eyphra and Chill Sea?”

Tarra had: effluvium of extinct blowholes, the pits were worked by a penal colony under the watchful, cruel eyes of guards little better than criminals themselves. It was said that men aged ten years for every one spent in those hellholes, and that their skins rapidly grew withered and yellow from…the…work!

Withered and yellow, aye. Which was a fair description of the way Tarra’s brain felt right now.

He sighed, shook his head in dismay, sat down in the dust. He looked up. “You escaped, hey?”

“Not so fast, Hrossak! Oh, you’re right, I was there, indeed I was—for three long years! And all that time spent planning my escape, which is all anyone does in that place, until finally it became imperative. You see, there was a ragged bone of a man in that place with me, and before he died he spoke to me of these vaults. His directions couldn’t be simpler: come around the southern tip of the Mountains of Lohmi until you find a waterfall and pool, and so on. He had been here, you see, coming upon this place (quite genuinely) by accident. Later, weighed down with treasure, he’d fallen into the hands of mountain men. They were so awed by what he had with him that they let him live, even let him keep a bauble or two before cuffing him about a bit and pointing him in the direction of Eyphra. Aye, and weeks later he’d stumbled into that suspicious city a ragged starveling, filthy and verminous, so that when the people saw his few paltry nuggets and gems… Why! What else could he be but a thief? And so they’d taken away the last of his trove and sent him to dig in the sulphur pits, which was where I met him when they sent me there for murder. Ah!—but he’d already been there for four years, and it was something of a legend how long Death had fruitlessly stalked him. However that may be, all men must die in the end. And he was no exception…

“Now then: oft and again he’d told me the tale of these treasure vaults, but never how to get here until the very end, with the last gasp of his dying. And by then I knew he told the truth, for dying, what use would he have for lies? He knew he was finished, you see, and so had nothing to lose.

“For that matter, neither had I much to lose; which was why, at first opportunity, I ran off. No easy task, Tarra Khash, flight from the sulphur pits. I left three guards dead in my wake, and a fourth crippled, but at last I was free and running. Aye, and now I had somewhere to run.

“Bits of jewellery I’d taken from the dead guards bought me third-class passage with a caravan I met with where it entered the pass through Lohmi’s peaks, following which I spent a deal of my time with a pair of guides, converting them from their loyalty to the caravan’s master to my own cause. Ah!—but it’s a powerful lure, treasure, as you’ve discovered.”

Here Tarra gruffly interrupted: “What? Hah! You can have all your much-vaunted tomb-loot, Hadj Dyzm. Keep it and good luck to you. Nothing more than cursed curiosity caused me to follow you, and more fool me for that!”

Again Dyzm’s chuckle, but darker now. “Well, and doubtless you’ve heard what curiosity did for the cat?”

Tarra nodded, almost groaning in his frustration. But then he took a deep breath, clenched his fists until the muscles of his arms bulged, and said: “But I’ve also heard how cats have nine lives. Be sure, Hadj Dzym, that in one of them, this mouser will catch up with a certain rat!”

“Come now, Hrossak!” gurgled the other. “What’s this I detect in your tone? Do you dare, in your unenviable position, to threaten? It bodes not well for our future dealings, I think! Be careful what you say. Better let me finish before you drop yourself even deeper in the mire. You see, I’m not an unreasonable man, and for all your treachery, I—”

“My treachery!” Tarra once more cut in, unable to believe his ears.

“Certainly! Didn’t you follow me when I tended my camels in the dusk, spying on me all the way? I had thought you might discover the cave behind the falls there and then. But no, you needed more encouragement. And so I gave it to you—tonight! Aye, and haven’t you admitted following me here, as I’d known you would? Curiosity, you say? But should I believe that? Am I as great a fool as you, then?”

“Amazing!” Tarra gasped. “And I’m talking to a self-confessed murderer?”

“Several times over!” Dyzm emphatically agreed. “And they needed killing all—but in any case, that’s quite another matter, part of an entirely separate set of circumstances. Now hear me out:

“Where was I ? Ah, yes—

“—So, there I was journeying with the caravan, putting a deal of distance twixt myself and sulphur pits, and along the way recruiting for my treasure hunt. And half-way down Lohmi’s eastern flank, lo! the mountain men struck. In great numbers, too. Now, perhaps on other occasion my converted guides might have stayed and fought and died for their rightful master, but now they had a new master and he had promised them riches. Once more the old principle surfaces, Tarra Khash. Namely: a poor man will risk his all for very little gain, but a rich man’s lust for life is that much stronger. Hasn’t he more to live for? So it was with the guides: my whispers had set deepest desires in motion, creating a conflict of loyalties. The choice was this: stay and remain poor and perhaps die—or flee and live and grow fat and rich. Need I say more? I doubt it…”

“You lured the traitors here,” Tarra nodded, “leaving caravan and all to tender mercy of mountain-bred barbarians. Very well, and where are your disciples now?”

“Alas, I know not,” said Dyzm, and the Hrossak sensed his shrug. “Except that you are closer to them than I am.”

“What?” Tarra gave a start, peering all about at the flickering shadows cast by his dying torch. (Hadj’s, upon the floor, had long since expired.) “Are you saying that they’re down here?”

“Aye, somewhere. More than that I can’t say; I’ve not seen them for a bit…” And this time Dyzm’s chuckle was deep and doomful indeed.

“You mean some harm’s befallen them, and you’ve made no effort to find and save them?”

“What? Lower myself down there?” the other feigned shock at the very suggestion. “Haven’t I explained? You speak to a man who toiled three long years in the sulphur pits, remember? And you think I would willingly incarcerate myself in another of Earth’s dark holes? For be sure such would be prison to me and surely drive me mad! No, not I, Tarra Khash.”

And now the Hrossak, for all that he was a hard man, felt genuinely sickened to his stomach. “You let them starve down here!” he accused, spitting out the sour bile of his mouth into the dust.

“I did not!” Dyzm denied. “Indeed I would have fed them well. Meat and fishes aplenty—water, too, if they’d needed it. My promise was this: a meal each time they half-filled this bucket here with gold and jewels. Any more than that and the rope might break, d’you see? And given a stouter rope they’d doubtless swarm up it. Anyway, starve they did not and my promise was, after all, redundant…”

“And that was their only incentive, that so long as they worked you would feed them?” Tarra shook his head in disgust. “‘Young bucks,’ you called them. Frightened pups, it seems to me.”

“Ah, no,” answered Dyzm. “More than hunger goaded them, that has to be admitted.”

His words—the way he spoke them, low and phlegmy, almost lingeringly—set Tarra’s skin to tingling. After a while, in as steady a voice as he could muster, he said: “Well, then, say on, old fox: what other incentives goaded them? Or better still get straight to the point and tell me how they died.”

“Two things I’ll tell you—” Dyzm’s voice was light again, however throaty, “about incentives. And one other thing about my age, for this fox is in no way old. ‘Aged’ I am, aye—by dint of sulphur steam in my throat and lungs, and my skin all yellowed from its sting—but not aged, if you see the distinction. And my belly puffed and misshapen from years of hunger, and likewise my limbs gnarly from hard labour. But my true years can’t number a great many more than your own, Tarra Khash, and that’s a bitter fact.”

“I’d marked all that for myself,” said Tarra, “but—”

“—But let me speak!” Dyzm’s turn to interrupt. And: “Incentives, you wanted. Very well. One: I would take four half-buckets of treasure—only four—and then lower the ladder and let them up, and all three of us would get our share. Two: the quicker they got to work and began filling the bucket, the better for them, for their time would likely be…limited.”

Limited? Tarra liked not the word. “By the amount of food you could provide?”

“No, game is plentiful in and around the lake, as you’ve seen. Guess again.”

“By the number of torches you could readily prepare, whose light the two would need in order to do your bidding?”

“No, the preparation of torches proved in no way inconvenient.”

Tarra frowned. “Then in what way limited?”

He heard Dyzm’s gurgly, self-satisfied sigh. “I cannot be sure,” he finally said. “It was only…something that my friend in the sulphur pits warned me about.”

“Oh?”

“Aye, for I also had it from him—in his dying breath, mind you, which was a deep one—that the ancient race of kings whose tombs and treasures these were, had set certain guardians over their sepulchres and sarcophagi, and that even now the protective spells of long-dead wizards were morbidly extant and active. Which is to say that the place is cursed, Tarra Khash, and that the longer you stay down there—in what you will shortly discover to be a veritable labyrinth of tombs—the more immediate the horror!”

IV

Horror? And the Hrossak cared for that word not at all! Nor on this occasion did he doubt the veracity of what Dyzm had said: it would explain why the pool and country around had not been settled. Nomads and hill men alike were wary of such places, as well they might be. Finally he found voice: “And the nature of this doom?”

“Who can say?” Dyzm replied. “Not I, for the two who went before you did not live to tell me. But they did tell me this: that in a certain tomb are twin statues of solid gold, fashioned in the likeness of winged krakens not unlike the dripstone idols of these cavern antechambers. And having loaded three half-buckets of treasure for me, they went off together to fetch me one of these statues; their last trip, as would have been. Alas, they returned not… But you need a fresh torch, Hrossak, for that one dies.” He let fall a fat faggot and Tarra quickly fired it.

“Now then,” Dyzm continued in a little while, “this is what I propose. Find for me that tomb and fetch me a kraken of gold, and that will suffice.”

“Suffice?”

“I shall then be satisfied that you are a sincere man and worthy to be my partner in future ventures. And when I have the statue, then shall I lower the ladder and we’ll be off to Chlangi together, and so on to Klühn.”

Tarra could not keep from laughing, albeit a mite hysterically. “Am I to believe this? Fool I am, Hadj Dyzm—great fool, as you’ve well proved—but such a fool?”

“Hmm!” Dyzm gruffly mused. He dropped more torches. “Well, think it over. I can wait awhile. How long the demon guardians will wait is a different matter. Meanwhile: ‘ware below!—I lower the bucket.” And down came the bucket on the end of its rope.

Tarra at once tugged at the rope, testing it, and as the bucket came to rest upon the floor he swung himself aloft, climbing by strength of his arms alone. Man-high he got—and not an inch higher. With soft, twangy report rope parted, and down crashed Hrossak atop bucket and all. “Ow!” he complained, getting upon his feet.

Above, Dyzm chuckled. “Ow, is it?” he said. “Worse than that, Tarra Khash, if the rope had held! Did you think I’d sit here and do nothing until you popped up out of the hole? I’ve a knife here you could shave with, to cut you or rope or both. Oh, I know, ’twas desperation made you try it. Well, you’ve tried and failed, so an end to tomfooleries, eh? Now I’ll lower the rope some and you can make a knot; after which you can get off and find me my kraken statue. But a warning: any more heroics and I’ll make you

fetch both!”

“Very well,” Tarra answered, breathing heavily, “—but first tell me something. Right here, a pace or two away, lies a great stone box of treasure. Doubtless your two dragged it here for you. Now tell me: why were its contents never hauled aloft?”

“Ah!” said Dyzm. “That would be their fourth haul, when they told me about the statues. I had forgotten.”

“So,” said the Hrossak, nodding, “returning with this box—their fourth haul and not the third, as you first alleged—these idiots told you about the golden, winged kraken idols, so that you spurned this latest haul in favour of the greater marvel they described. Is that it?”

“Something like that, aye. I’m glad you reminded me. Perhaps before you get off searching you’d like to—”

“I would not like to!” answered Hrossak hotly. “It’s either contents of this box or one of these damned idols—if I can find ’em—but not both. Which, I rather fancy, is what they told you, too.”

Hadj Dyzm was peeved. “Hmm!” he grumbled. “Perhaps you’re not so daft after all, Hrossak. But…I’ve set my heart on an idol, and so you’d better be off, find and fetch it.”

“Not so fast,” said Tarra. “Your word before I go: you will fetch me up, when I return with the statue?” (Even though he knew very well that Hadj Dyzm would not.)

“My word,” said the other, very gravely.

“So be it,” said the Hrossak. “Now, which way do I go?”

“I was right after all,” said Dyzm. “You are daft—and deaf to boot! How should I know which way you must go? I would suggest you follow prints on dusty floor, as so recently you followed mine…”

V

A little while later Tarra knew exactly what the fox had meant by a labyrinth. Following sandal prints in the dust, he moved from cavern to cavern, and all of them alike as cells in a comb of honey. A veritable necropolis, this place, where bones were piled about the walls in terrible profusion, and skulls heaped high as a man’s waist. Not all dead kings, these ossified remains; no, for most wore fetters about their ankles, or heaps of rust where ages had eaten the metal away. And about their shoulders small wooden yokes turned almost to stone; and each skeleton right hand with its little finger missing, to mark him (or her) as property of the king.

Tarra wrinkled his nose. They had been savages in those days, he thought, for all their trappings of civilization, their carving and metal-moulding, their love of jewellery, their long-forgotten death-rituals, of which these bones formed the merest crumbling relics. Still, no time to ponder the ways of men whose race was old when the desert was young; there was much to be done, and not all of Hrossak’s searching concerned with golden idols, either!

Tarra Khash remembered all too clearly the years he’d spent trapped in Nud Annoxin’s well-cell in Thinhla. Hah!—he’d never thought to be in just such predicament again. And yet now…? Well, life is short enough; it was not Tarra’s intention to spend the rest of his down here. Ideas were slowly dawning, taking shape in his brain like wraiths of mist over fertile soil as he pondered the problem.

Shuddering a little (from the cold of the place, he told himself, for he had not brought his blanket with him), he passed through more of the domed caves, always following the print tracks where they were most dense—but to one side of them, so that his own trail would be clear and fresh—and knowing that these ways had been explored before. At least he had something of an advantage in that; but they, his predecessors, had had each other’s company. Company?—in this place of death Tarra would be satisfied right now by sight of rat, let alone fellow man!

His predecessors… He wondered what fate had overtaken them. Aye, and perhaps he’d soon enough find that out, too.

But for now—if he could only find something to use as grapple. And something else as rope. For the fox couldn’t sit up there forever. He too must eat and drink. Grapple and rope, aye—but what to use? A long golden chain, perhaps? No, too soft and much too heavy, and all other metal doubtless rotten or rusted utterly away. And Tarra aware with every passing moment, as ideas were first considered, then discarded, that the “guardians” of this place—if they weren’t merely frighteners conjured out of Hadj Dyzm’s own imagination—might even now be waking.

Such were his thoughts as he came by light of flaring fagot into a central chamber large by comparison as that of a queen at the centre of her hive. A queen, or a king, or many such. For here the walls had been cut into deep niches, and each niche containing a massy sarcophagus carved from solid rock, and all about these centuried coffins the floor strewn with wealth untold!

But in the middle of this circular, high-domed cavern, there reposed the mightiest tomb of all: a veritable mausoleum, with high marble ceiling of its own held up by fluted marble columns, and an entrance guarded by—

Guarded? The word was too close to “guardian” to do a lot for Tarra’s nerves. But like it or not the tomb was guarded—by a pair of golden krakens, wings and all, seated atop onyx pedestals, one on each side of the leering portal. Somewhat awed (for this must surely be the last resting place of the greatest of all these ancient monarchs) the Hrossak moved forward and stuck his torch in the rib-cage of a skeleton where it lay at the foot of the pedestal on the left…stuck it there and slowly straightened up, felt gooseflesh crawl on naked arms and thighs and back—and leapt backward as if fanged by viper!

Long moments Tarra stood there then, in torchlight flickering, with heart pounding, longing to flee full tilt but nailed to the spot as if his feet had taken root in solid rock. And all the while his gaze rapt upon that cadaver whose ribs supported the hissing brand, that skeleton which even now wore ragged robe, upon whose bony feet were leather sandals of the sort that had made those recent prints in dust of ages!

The Hrossak took a breath—and another—and forced his hammering heart to a slower pace and the trembling of his limbs to marble stillness. And breathing deeply a third time, he slowly crouched and leaned forward, studying morbid remains more closely. The bones were burned as from some mordant acid. In places their surfaces were sticky and shiny-black with tarry traces, possibly burnt and liquefied marrow. Tatters of skin still attached, but so sere and withered as to be parchment patches, and the skull…that was worst of all.

Yawning jaws gaped impossibly wide in frozen scream, and torch-flung shadows shifted in empty sockets like frightened ghosts of eyes. Still crouching, shuddering, Tarra took up his torch and held it out at arm’s length toward the other pedestal. As he had suspected (without, as yet, knowing why he suspected), a second skeleton, in much the same condition, sprawled beneath the other kraken. And again the word “guardians” seemed to echo in Hrossak’s head.

But the images were only of gold, not loathsome flesh and alien ichor, and even were they alive—if they were, indeed, the guardians—their size would hardly make them a threat. Why, they were little more than octopuses, for all the goldsmith’s loathsome skill!

Tarra gazed into sightless golden eyes, glanced at wings folded back, laid his hands upon tentacles half-lifted, apparently in groping query. Cold gold, in no wise threatening. And yet it seemed to the Hrossak there was a film of moisture, of some nameless tomb-slime, on the surface of the metal, making it almost slippery to the touch. That wouldn’t be much help when it came to carrying the thing. And if he could not find means to manufacture grapnel and rope, then for certain he must put his faith in Hadj Dyzm—initially, anyway.

He moved round behind the pedestal, closed his arms about the belly of the idol until his hands clasped his elbows, lifted. Heavy, aye, but he thought it would fit into the bucket. Only…would the rope be strong enough?

Rope! And again a picture of rope and grapple burned on the surface of his mind’s eye. Tarra eased the idol back onto its pedestal, bent down and tore at the tatters which clothed the mysteriously slain cadaver. At his touch they crumbled away. Whatever it was seared the bones—seared the flesh from those bones—it had also worked on the coarse cloth. No, he could hardly make a rope out of this rotten stuff; but now he had a better idea. Dyzm himself would furnish the rope!

First, however—

He checked his torch, which was beginning to burn a trifle low, then turned toward the open door of the sepulchre. This was sheer curiosity, he knew—and he minded what Hadj Dyzm had said of curiosity—but still he had to know what sort of king it was whose incarceration in some dim bygone age had warranted mass slaughter in and about these tomb-caves.

Pausing before the high, dark portal, he thrust out torch before him and saw within—

No carven coffin here but a massive throne, and seated thereon a shrivelled mummy all of shiny bone and leather, upright and proud and fused to marble seat by nameless ages. Indeed, the very fossil of a thing. A thing, aye, for the huge creature was not and never had been human.

Entering, Tarra approached a throne whose platform was tall as his chest, staring up at what in its day must have been a fearsome sight. Even now the thing was terrifying. But…it was dead, and dead things can hurt no one. Can they?

He held his torch high.

The mummy was that of a lizard-man, tall, thin and long headed; with fangs curving down from fleshless jaws, and leathern chin still sprouting a goatlike beard of coarse hair; and upon its head a jewelled pschent, and in its talon of a hand a sceptre or knobby wand of ebony set with precious stones.

So this had been the living creature whose likeness Tarra had seen carved from the dripstone of the upper caves. Also, it had been a king of kings, and crueller far than any merely human king. He looked again at the wand. A fascinating thing. The Hrossak reached up his hand to jewelled, ebony rod, giving it a tug. But it was now one with dry claw, welded there by time. He tugged harder—and heard from behind him a low rumble!

In the next split second several things…

First: Tarra remembered again his dream of a great slab door slamming shut. Then: he saw that in fact the wand was not held fast in claw but attached by golden link to a lever in the arm of the throne. Finally: even thinking these thoughts he was hurling himself backward, diving, slithering out of tomb on his belly as the door, falling in an arc from the inner ceiling, came thundering down. Then Tarra feeling that monstrous counterbalanced slab brushing his heels, and its gongy reverberations exactly as he had dreamed them!

His torch had gone flying, skittering across the floor in a straight line; but now, its impetus spent, it rolled a little in the dust. This had the effect of damping the flame. Still rolling, it flickered lower, came to rest smoking hugely from a dull red knob. The darkness at once crept in…

Ignoring his fear (snarling like a great hound at his back) Hrossak leapt to the near-extinguished brand, gathered it up, spun with it in a rushing, dizzy circle. This had the double effect of creating a protective ring about himself in the sudden, gibbering darkness, and of aerating the hot heart of the faggot, which answered by bursting into bright light. The shadows slunk back, defeated.

Panting, fighting to control mind and flesh alike, for this last close call had near unmanned him, the Hrossak suddenly found himself angry. Now berserker he was not—not in the way of the blood-crazy Northmen of the fjords—but when Tarra Khash was roused he really was roused. Right now he was mad at himself for ignoring his own instincts in the first place, mad at whichever ancient architect had designed this place as death-trap, mad at his predicament (which might yet prove permanent), but most of all mad at the miserable and much-loathed Hadj Dyzm, who must now be made to pay for all. Nor was Hrossak temper improved much by the fact that the skin of his hands, arms and chest had now commenced to itch and burn terribly, an affliction for which he could find no good cause or reason unless—

—unless nothing!—for these were precisely the areas of his person which he had pressed against the golden kraken idol!

Was that vile metallic sweat he had noticed upon the thing some sort of stinging acid, then? Some poison? If so, patently the centuries had detracted from its potency. Before striding from the main chamber and following his own trail toward the entrance shaft, Tarra stooped, scooped up dust, layered it upon the stinging areas. Also, he glanced once more at the golden idols.

They crouched, gleaming, upon their pedestals exactly as before…and yet somehow—different? Were they not, perhaps, more upright? Did their eyes not seem about to pop open? Had their tentacles not stretched outward fractionally, perhaps threateningly, and was not the sheen of slime upon their metal surfaces that much thicker and slimier?

The Hrossak snorted. So much for a wild imagination! But enough of that, now he must put his plan into action without delay. This place was dangerous; something hideous had happened to the men who came here before him; time was wasting and there could well be other horrors down here which as yet Tarra knew nothing about. He returned quickly to where the bucket lay upon the floor at the end of its rope.

“Ho!” came Hadj Dyzm’s harsh greeting as Tarra fired a fresh torch. “And where’s my idol, Hrossak?”

Tarra looked up. Dyzm’s evil face peered down from the ceiling hole, but anxiously, Tarra thought. “Oh, I’ve found your damned idols, foxy one,” he called up, “and nearly came to grief doing it! This place is booby trapped, and I was very nearly the booby!”

“But the idol,” Dyzm pressed, “Where is it?”

Tarra thought fast. “Three things,” he said. “First: the kraken idols lie on a lower level. Not deep, but impossible to scale carrying idol. Second: I have a solution for first. Third: as you’ve seen, I had to return for a fresh torch.”

“Clown!” snapped Dyzm. “Waster of time! Why did you not take spare faggots with you?”

“An oversight,” Tarra agreed. “Do you want to hear my solution?”

“Get on with it.”

“I need hauling gear—namely, a rope.”

“What’s this?” Dyzm was suspicious.

“To hoist idol up from below,” Tarra lied again. “Also, ’twere a good test: a chance to see if the rope is strong enough.”

“Explain.”

“Easy: if the rope breaks from weight of kraken alone, certainly it will break with bucket and idol both.”

“Ah!” Dyzm’s suspicion seemed confirmed. “You want me to toss down the bucket rope in order to make yourself a grappling hook.”

Tarra feigned exasperation. “What? Have I not already tried to climb, and did not the rope break? The idol, however, is fairly small, not quite the weight of a man.”

“Hmm! How much rope do you need?”

Enough to hang you! Tarra thought, but out loud he said: “Oh, about ten man-lengths.”

“What?” Dyzm spluttered. “You’re surely mad, Hrossak! Am I then to give you a length twice as long as the distance between us? Now surely you plan to make a grapnel!”

“Of what?” Tarra sighed. “Crumbling bones for hook, or soft gold, perhaps? Now who’s wasting time? Even if it were possible, how could I climb with you up there to cut me or rope or both with your sharp knife. ’Twas you pointed that out in the first place, remember? And anyway, I have your promise to let down the ladder—or had you forgotten that, too?”

“Now, now, lad—don’t go jumping to hasty conclusions.” Tarra could hear him shuffling about a little; a thin trickle of dust drifted down from above; finally:

“Very well, assume I give you the length of rope you say you need. What then?”

“First I fetch the idol. Then you lower what rope you have left, and I tie mine to it. Ah!—and to be certain it won’t break, we use a double length. You then haul up idol in bucket. And if you’re worried about me swarming up the rope, well, you still have your knife, right? Then—you toss down rope ladder for me. And the last quickly, for already I’ve had enough of this place!”

Dyzm considered it again, said: “Done!”

A moment later and the rope began coiling in the bottom of the bucket, and as it coiled so Tarra gazed avidly at the heavy handle of that container, which he knew he could bend into a perfect hook for hurling! Finally Dyzm cut the rope, let its end fall.

“There!” he called down. “Ten man-lengths.”

Tarra loosened the rope from the bucket handle, coiled it in loops over one shoulder. He must now play out the game to its full. Obviously he could neither make nor use grapple with Dyzm still up there, and so must first ensure his departure.

“Incidentally,” he said, in manner casual, “those booby-traps I mentioned. It wasn’t one such which killed your last two partners.”

“Eh?” from above, in voice startled. “How do you mean? Did you find them?”

“Aye, what’s left of them. Obviously the work of your unknown ‘guardians’, Hadj. But these caves are extensive, possibly reaching out for many miles under the desert. The guardians—whatever they are—must be elsewhere. If they were here…then were we both dead in a trice!”

“Then were you dead in a trice, you mean,” the other corrected.

But Tarra only shook his head. “Both of us,” he insisted. “I found one of your lads on a high, narrow ledge near-inaccessible. He was all broken in parts and the flesh slurped off him. The other, in like condition, lay in narrow niche no more than a crack in the wall—but the horrors had found him there, for sure. And would the funnel of this well stop them? I doubt it.”

The other was silent.

Tarra started away, keeping his head down and grinning grimly to himself; but Dyzm at once called him to a halt. “Hrossak—do you have any idea of the true nature of these guardians?”

“Who can say?” Tarra was mysterious. “Perhaps they slither, or flop. Likely, they fly! One thing for sure: they suck flesh from bones easy as leeches draw blood!” And off he went.

Now this was the Hrossak’s plan: that he wait a while, then cause a loud commotion of screaming and such, and shrieking, “The guardians! The guardians!” And gurgling most horribly until Hadj Dyzm must surely believe him dead. All of which to be performed, of course, right out of sight of him above. Then utter silence (in which Tarra hoped to detect sounds of fox’s frenzied flight), and back to break handle from bucket, form grapnel, attach double length of rope, and so escape. Then to track villain down and break his scrawny neck!

That had been his first plan…

But now, considering it again, Tarra had second thoughts. Since he must wait down here for at least a little while, why not turn the interval to his own advantage? For even now, if things went wrong—if, for instance, the real guardians came on the scene—he might still have to rely on Hadj Dyzm to get him out of here quickly. His chance of the latter happening, especially now, after putting the fears up the fox, were slim, he knew; but any port in a storm. Better slim chance than no chance at all. And so it were best if he appeared to be following Hadj’s instructions right up to the very end. Anyway, the thought of stealing one of the idols was somehow appealing.

With these thoughts on his mind, he rapidly retraced his steps to the cave of the golden krakens where they waited on their pedestals before the tomb of the lizard-king, and—

By light of flaring torch the Hrossak gaped at the transformation taken place in the idols. For they did not wait atop their pedestals—not exactly. And now, truth slowly dawning, Tarra began to discern the real nature of the curse attaching to these subterranean tombs. Doubtless the alien monarchs of this long-extinct race had been great wizards, whose spells and maledictions had reached down through dim and terrible centuries. But in the end even the most powerful spells lose their potency, including this one. What must in its primordial origin have been a swift metamorphosis indeed was now turned to a tortuously slow thing—but a deadly thing for all that, as witness the pair of charred cadavers.

With creep impossibly slow—so slow the eye could scarce note it—the kraken idols were moving. And doubtless the process was gradually speeding up even as the spell persisted. For they had commenced to slither down the length of their pedestals, sucker arms clinging to the tops as they imperceptibly lowered themselves. Their eyes were half-open now, and gemstone orbs gleamed blackly and evilly beneath lids of beaten gold. Moreover, the acid ooze which their bodies seemed to exude had thickened visibly, smoking a little where it contacted the onyx of the pedestals.

Tarra’s first thought was of flight, but where to flee? Go back and tell Hadj Dyzm and the fiend would doubtless leave him here till krakens were fully transformed. And would there be sufficient time remaining to make and use grapnel? Doubtful…

Doom descended on the Hrossak’s shoulders like an icy cloak; he felt weighed down by it. Was this to be the end, then? Must he, too, succumb to kraken kiss, be turned to bag of scorched and tarry bones?

Aye, possibly—but not alone!

Filled now with dreams of red revenge, which strengthened him, Tarra ran forward and fastened a double loop of rope about the belly of the kraken on the left, yanking until its tentacle tips slipped free from rim of pedestal. And back through shadow-flickered caves he dragged the morbid, scarcely mobile thing, while acrid smoke curled up from rope, where an as yet sluggish acid ate into it. But the rope held and at last sweaty Hrossak emerged beneath the spot where Hadj Dyzm waited.

“Have you got it?” the fox eagerly, breathlessly called down.

“Aye,” panted Tarra, “at the end of my rope. Now send down your end and prepare to wind away.” And he rolled the bucket out of sight as if in preparation.

Down came Hadj’s rope without delay, and Tarra knotting it to the middle of his length, and Hadj taking up the slack. Then the Hrossak hauled kraken into view, and fox’s gasp from above. “Beautiful!” he croaked, for he saw only the gold and not the monstrous mutation, the constantly accelerating mobility of the thing.

The rope where it coiled kraken’s belly was near burned through now, so Tarra made fresh loops under reaching tentacles and back of wings. Once he inadvertently touched the golden flesh of the monster—and had to bite his lip to keep from shouting his agony, as the skin of his knuckles blackened and cracked!

But at last, “Haul away!” he cried; and chortling greatly the fox took the strain and commenced turning the handle of his gear. And such was his greed that the bucket was now forgotten. But Tarra had not forgotten it.

And so, as the mass of transmuting gold-flesh slowly ascended in short jerks, turning like a plumb bob on its line, Hrossak stepped into shadow and tore the handle from the bucket, quickly bending it into a hook. Stepping back, he thrust hook through loop of rope before it was drawn up too high, and standing beneath the suspended idol cried: “Now let down the ladder, Hadj Dyzm, as agreed, lest I impede your progress with my own weight. For it’s a fact you can’t lift idol and me both!”

“One thing at a time,” the other answered. “First the idol.”

“Damn you, Hadj!” cried Tarra, hanging something of his weight on the hook to let the other see he was in earnest—only to have the hook straighten out at once and slip from the loop, leaving Tarra to fall to his knees. And by the time he was back on his feet, rope and idol and all had been dragged up well beyond his reach, and Hadj’s chuckle echoing horribly on high—for a little while.

Then, while Hrossak stood clenching and unclenching his fists and scowling, came Hadj’s voice in something of a query: “Hrossak—what’s this nasty reek I smell?” (and idol slowly turning on its line, disappearing up the flue).

“The reek of my sweat,” answered Tarra, “mingled with smoke of torch’s dying—aye, and in all likelihood my dying, too!” He stepped out of harm’s way as droplets hissed down from above, smoking where they struck the floor. And now the idol almost as high as the rim, and droplets of acid slime falling faster in a hissing rain.

Tarra kept well back, listening to fox’s grunting as he worked the gear—his grunting, then his squawk of surprise, and at last his shriek of sheerest horror!

In his mind’s eye Tarra could picture it all in great detail:

The gear turning, winding up the rope, a ratchet holding it while Hadj Dyzm rested his muscles before making the next turn. And the kraken coming into view, a thing of massy, gleamy gold. Another turn, and eyes no longer glazed glaring into Hadj’s—and tentacles no longer leaden reaching—and acid no longer dilute squirting and hissing!

Then—

Still screaming to burst his heart—fat bundle of rags entwined in golden nightmare of living, lethal tentacles—Hadj and kraken and all came plummeting down the shaft. Even the rope ladder, though that fell only part way, hanging there tantalizingly beyond Hrossak’s reach.

And Hadj’s body broken but not yet dead, flopping on the floor in terrible grip, his flesh melting and steaming away, as Tarra bent the bucket’s handle back into a hook and snatched up a length of good rope. And horror of horrors, now the other kraken slithering into view from out the dark, reaching to aid its evil twin!

Now the Hrossak cast for dear life, cast his hook up to where the lower rungs of the ladder dangled. Missed!—and another cast.

Hideous, hissing tentacles reaching for his ankles; vile vapour boiling up from no longer screaming fox; the entire chamber filled with loathsome reek and the hook catching at last, dragging ladder with it to slime-puddled floor.

Then Tarra was aloft, and later he would not remember his hands on rungs at all. Only the blind panic and shrieking terror that seemed to hurl him up and out of the hole and up the spiral steps and down the long tunnel of carven stalactites to the waterfall and so out into the night. And no pause even to negotiate the ledge behind the fall, but a mighty dive which took him through that curtain of falling water, out and down under the stars to strike the lake with hardly a splash; and then the exhausting swim back to shore against the whirlpool’s pull, to where a fire’s embers smouldered and guttered still.

After that—

Morning found a rich, rich man following the foothills east with his camels. And never a backward glance from Tarra Khash…