Rise of the Death Dealer (32 page)

THE WHITE LORD

F
ar below the blood-red barge, on the floor of the Inland Sea, a huge shadow
drifted inside a greenish gloom enveloping a massive black rock. Looming behind
weaving elkhorns and sea whips undulating on the sandy bottom, the dim mass came
to a stop, as if hearing something other than the clicking of shrimp and the wet
flutter of the sea whips. Ominous. Vague. Suddenly, as if yanked by a hook, it
turned and shot forward, growing larger and darker.

A rainbow of fish of all sizes and shapes, swarming across pink coral beds in
the shadow’s path, burst apart in a chaos of color and fled through gently
swaying sea fans. The clicking of the shrimp stopped, and a hush consumed the
depths. Except for the enlarging shadow, there was a sudden void of life.

The mass of darkness, still within the murky gloom, crashed through a
protruding arch of rock, dislodging a cascade of black boulders and swept up and
out of the gloom, its pointed snout spearing up through the liquid-blue space.

Its underslung mouth was parted, displaying rows of jagged, saw-toothed
teeth. Its round eyes were fixed with a cold death stare. Its sickle-shaped fin
stood proud and regal on its back, the brutal crown of its primordial species.
The sleek whitish barrel of its body pulsed with muscle and cartilage, driven by the sweep of its crescent-shaped tail. An inevitable force consumed with
insatiable hunger.

Faster and faster it whipped upward, rising not only from the depths of the
sea but out of the corridors of time. A great white shark. The culmination of
one hundred and eighty million years of breeding, and black magic.

A Lord of Destruction.

Near the surface, sunlight pierced the green-black waters and glanced off the
white blades of the shark’s teeth as its lower jaw opened and the upper
protruded. Fifty feet above it, a small figure flailed desperately, churning the
surface to bubbles and froth.

The shark thrust forward, like an ejaculation of white death spewed by the
bowels of the earth. The suction-mouthed remora fish hitchhiking on its body
were ripped away.

Jaws spread, the shark hit the thrashing body of a brown-skinned girl dead
center. The impact drove her torso deep into the mouth cavity, and a thrashing
leg thrust into the throat. The shark burst free of the surface as the shrill
scream of the girl sang in his small brain.

The jaws snapped shut. The screaming stopped, and bits of the girl fell away
from the jaws, splashed back into the sea. In a frenzy of feeding, the shark
devoured the scraps, churning the sea to a frothy red foam and sending geysers
of water thirty feet into the air.

When it had finished, the shark circled, momentarily content, as it felt the
sacred black wine spill from the girl’s butchered stomach to heat its own belly.
Then it faced the blood-red barge floating beside the tip of black rock. On the
command deck, Tiyy, strangely wrinkled and wrapped in furs, smiled down at him.
Beside her stood a small smooth stranger. The high priestess put a mouth harp to
her lips and played it.

A painfully beautiful flow of notes vibrated across the water.

The shark convulsed angrily, rejecting the harp’s musical command. But Tiyy
continued to play, and the fish calmed, raised its pointed snout obediently,
then dove, swept back down into the depths of the greenish gloom.

Reaching the floor of the ocean, it glided about the coralheads, rolled
through the brown elkhorns and sea whips, touched bottom disturbing an ivory
tongue of sand. There its gills expanded, as if savoring for the last time the
cold fetid scents of home.

ARRRGGG!

T
he Nymph Queen’s royal barge swiftly returned to the sea cave, and Tiyy
disembarked, strode into a shadowed rock tunnel siding the pier, with Schraak
following at a respectful two strides.

Around them, the sound of the incoming tide crashed and thundered in the rock
walls like the angry voice of a dark god, and Schraak shuddered with terror. He
was a stranger to Pyram’s underground world, but he knew it for what it was, the
birthplace of horror. His body, however, enjoyed the dank air and odors of wet
earth, and the deeper they went, the more his true nature came to show. His flesh became spongy and oozed a soothing slime.

Reaching a sizable cave holding a tide pool, Tiyy stopped at the edge of the
rock ledge overlooking the water, and stared down into the swirling mass.
Waiting. Awed and mystified, Schraak stood beside her, his quick small eyes
searching his torchlit surroundings.

The pool was in one of the many natural caves which had been formed over the
centuries by sea water eating into the cracks at the base of the limestone
cliffs. Its submerged floor had a three-foot circular hole through which sea
water spilled. It led down to more creeping water-filled passages, crawl holes
and caves. These had been formed in the distant ages when the Inland Sea was
much lower. Where the actual bottom of the underwater labyrinth lay was unknown.

Directly above the churning tide pool, stalactites, white, tan, rust-red,
blue and grey, dripped from the ceiling of the cave forming a multitude of
shapes: pillars, knobs, warts and cathedral arches. There were crazy, snakelike
creepers formed by wind, cave pearls and rimstone which formed the ledge on
which the Nymph Queen and Schraak stood. Here and there in the wall behind the
ledge were crawl holes, some no bigger than a fork blade, and others large
enough for the passage of a small man.

Sentries, crawling on hands and knees, emerged at the openings of three of
the shadowed holes: worm soldiers belonging to the castle’s underground
garrison. Their umber flesh glistened wetly under sparse leather armor, and
short curved blades grew from the stumps of their right hands. Small dark holes
served them as ears, and their tooth-filled mouths hung open as they stared
expectantly at the pool.

As the tide continued to rise, waves of sea water crashed through the large
tunnel and spilled into the pool, sloshing up the rock walls and washing over
the edge of the ledge. With the waves came thin spears of sunlight. They cut
through the turbulent walls of water, turning them bright green and filling the
cave with a foreboding glow.

Suddenly the cave darkened, and Schraak shuddered, backing away from the
edge. Seeing what Schraak had seen, the sentries squirmed back into their crawl
holes out of sight. But Tiyy held her place. Confident. Regal.

A huge dark shape was riding a wave, blocking out the light. Then it splashed
into the pool, and sunlight again spilled in, giving shape and identity to the
massive barrel of the great white shark’s body. It whipped and writhed in the
translucent green water, plunged down and vanished in the darkness of the pool’s
depths.

Nothing moved. Schraak inched back to the edge of the ledge, and the heads of
the sentries slowly reemerged, revealing thin highlights of reflected sunlight
between wet, spongy folds of flesh.

A tiny whirlpool, the size of a thumbnail, formed at the center of the pool.
It spun in place, then suddenly widened. Its edges were a swirling froth of
murky white, the center a black spinning hole. Slowly a silver-white helmet rose
out of the inky maelstrom. It covered the head of a man.

Both helmet and neck cape followed the curve of bone and flesh like
opalescent growth, and glittered metallically, parting over exposed pointed ears
to flow into graceful depressions below wide blunt cheekbones. His large oval
eyes opened slowly, a deep blue-grey and cold, with whites that were not white,
but pale indigo. Intent. Humorless. Eyes possessed by death and the economical
grace of controlled violence.

Tiyy smiled regally and said, “Welcome, Lord Baskt, it has been a long time.”

Schraak fell to his knees reverently, placing palms and forehead against the
cold wet stone floor.

The Lord of Destruction floated toward the ledge and ascended the sunken
steps. His armor was a dripping rainbow of color, subtle blue, pink and indigo
plates that left a trail of color behind in the water. They rose and fell and
slid slightly from side to side, accommodating his joints as he moved, and did
so without the tinkle or clatter of metal. They were not metal, but hard
cartilage growing out of muscle.

His corded arms were bare. Glistening saw-edged teeth protruded along the
ridge formed by the bones of his forearms and from the backs of his knuckles.
Standing on the ledge, his seven-foot bulk towered over his diminutive queen in
a subtle whiplike crouch, as if ready to strike, his head low between his
massive shoulders. Over his rounded back rose a dorsal fin.

The water coating the massive lord’s body, instead of dripping off, clung to
him adoringly. The whirlpool still spun and splashed, sending arms of water
reaching over the ledge to bathe his legs. Then the water released its hold,
drained off his body and submissively slid back into the pool. The whirlpool
sucked it up, then quickly lost force and died, radiating ripples vanishing
against the walls of the cave.

Baskt, taking no notice of Schraak as he rose uncertainly, dipped his head to
his queen, giving her the bare minimum of respect. Then he put his hard wary
eyes on her wrinkled face, staring intently at a mole on the side of her chin.
There was a hair growing out of it thick enough to lace a sandal.

“Why do you stare?” she asked with irritable sarcasm. “After three hundred
years, don’t I have the right to show my age?”

Her humor escaped his simple mind. “What’s happened?” he asked, his voice
demanding, arrogant.

In reply, she smiled and spread her arms, parting her fur robes. She was
naked except for a thin paddle-shaped apron inlaid with precious jewels, a
silver girdle studded with diamonds and a thin leopard-skin halter which barely
covered the tips of her breasts. One was as round and firm as a fresh pear, the
other a flaccid, leathery sack. It contrasted sharply with her brown-gold body,
soft, curvaceous, carnal, that of a nubile seventeen-year-old.

Baskt stared at the decaying breast, and she said evenly, “I’m dying.”

He straightened defiantly, unwilling to accept her announcement, because he
was dependent, as were all other demon spawn, on the sacred black wine which
only her magic could produce.

“Yes,” Tiyy said, “you are right to be afraid. All of our lives, my kingdom,
the master himself is in danger. But you are going to save us all.” His eyes
thinned with curiosity, and she nodded at Schraak. “This is Schraak. He has just
arrived from the Land of Smoking Skies with a frightening tale. The homed helmet
has been stolen by a Barbarian called Gath of Baal. With its help, he and
Barbarian tribes of the Great Forest Basin have driven the Kitzakk Horde from
their desert territory. Schraak’s mistress, the Queen of Serpents, joined forces
with the Kitzakks and tried to stop them, to retrieve the helmet. But she failed
and then vanished. No one has seen or heard from her. Schraak, it appears, is
the only survivor. He was buried alive in the underground chambers of the
Kitzakk’s desert capital, but his wormlike nature allowed him to escape. He then
returned to the Land of Smoking Skies and told our holy father what had
happened. Our master ordered him to come here and tell me. But as Schraak was
leaving, our lord became so enraged at this disastrous turn of events that he
exploded, destroying his altar… and silencing it.”

Baskt’s huge underslung jaw dropped partly open. From the holy altar, and
from it alone, could their lord speak and instruct his servants. Without it,
they were all masterless. Doomed. He asked quietly, “But you have the magic to
build a new altar?”

“Yes,” she said, “and only a month ago I could have. But with the Queen of
Serpents gone, there have been no slave caravans from the Land of Smoking Skies.
The last was over a month ago. Consequently, there have been no carefully
selected slave girls for me to feed upon, and I am losing strength rapidly.”

Arrogant pride flashed behind the lord’s eyes. “You don’t need the slave
caravans. I’ll find the girls for you.”

“In the Inland Sea?” Her tone mocked him. “No,” he said, indignant. “I’ll
gather the slavemasters. They’ll find all you want, bring them from the ends of
the earth if they have to.”

“Arrrggg!” she growled. “There is no time for that!
Besides,” she turned to Schraak, “there is no need. Schraak here knows where
there is a girl who can supply all my needs.”

“One girl?” Baskt grunted in disbelief.

“Yes, my lord,” Schraak said humbly, and bowed. “She lives in the Great
Forest Basin, in a village called Weaver.”

“A Barbarian,” Baskt scoffed.

“Yes, my lord, but she is young, not more than seventeen, and of a beauty
that will amaze you. Her Kaa is strong! Terribly strong! More than pure enough to feed your queen. My
mistress, Cobra, the Queen of Serpents, she examined her herself.”

Baskt, visibly impressed, shared a malignant smile of dark anticipation with
his queen.

In that ancient world, the Kaa, the spirit, within all living things was
still raw and powerful and untamed. Untainted and unweakened by fears aroused
by sophisticated technologies and religions, unchained by the stifling
limitations of scientific reasoning. Some were so pure and strong that they
could be extracted by magical formulas, and extraordinary powers of sorcery. A
few were so rarefied that they could be given substance, be transformed into
powders and potions, then be administered to human beings. In this manner one Kaa was joined with another, doubling the strength and frequently transforming
both nature and body. Tiyy, having lain with the Master of Darkness, carried his
demon seed within her, and it gave her the rare and extraordinary powers
required for such thaumaturgy. In addition, within her underground laboratory
she held a living source of power with which she could manipulate and control
the strongest Kaa and bend it to her sinister will.

The Nymph Queen nodded at Schraak and said, “Schraak has seen the Barbarian
girl and, if he wishes to earn the rewards I have promised him, he will remember
her well enough to identify her for you. Her name is Robin Lakehair. Now,
assemble as many soldiers as you think you will need. You’ll leave immediately.”

Baskt shook his head. “I need no help to steal a girl.”

“I know,” she snapped. “Nevertheless, you will take it. This thief who stole
the helmet is somehow linked to the girl. He may be guarding her, and with the
helmet his strength will rival your own.” His grin grew with anticipation and
she shook her head slowly. “No, Lord Baskt. If there is any way to avoid meeting
this Barbarian, any way at all, you will do it. Understand? You will take no
risks! None! This time, when you see a drop of water, you will harness your
pride and not transform yourself into a shark just so everyone can see you do
it. Your mission must be kept secret at all costs, or people will suspect what
has happened to me.”

He hesitated, and bowed belligerently, barely dipping his head.

“Good,” she whispered, her voice feverish. “Now go! Fetch her! A few scraps
of her meat, a bottle of her blood! That’s all I need.”