The plan was simple enough. They would arrive at the witch’s chambers,
Wikkell ostensibly a captive. The guard worms knew Deek as a confidant to
Chuntha and would normally have little hesitation about admitting him to her
sanctum. Deek would indicate that he was supposed to bring his captive to the
witch for questioning. Of course, since Chuntha was not inside, he would need
to wait for a time.
Once inside the chambers, Deek and Wikkell would steal one of the witch’s
more prized possessions—some spell or talisman—and then leave, offering the
guard worms a story about Chuntha’s having summoned them elsewhere. Guard worms
were picked for their size and fighting skills, not for their brains, and Deek
had little worry that they would impede the plan in either direction.
Then, to finish the plan, they would reverse roles—Wikkell playing captor
and Deek captive—and repeat the operation at the chambers of the wizard. It
would take another two days at their best speed, but when it was done, each
would have a magical talisman from the inner chambers of the ruler opposite.
With such devices in hand, convincing their people that they stood a chance
against witch and wizard should be much easier. Both Deek and Wikkell had
rehearsed their speeches:
“If the wizard/witch is so powerful,” they would say, “then
how is it that I was able to enter his/her chambers and take this magical
implement so easily? He/she is more bluster than bite. We can prevail!”
Admittedly, there was no guarantee that this idea would positively work, but
certainly it was a better idea than awaiting the certain end that would befall
Wikkell and Deek whenever their respective masters finally got around to
wondering about them. A small chance, they thought, was better than none at
all.
Several times as they neared the witch’s chambers, Deek and Wikkell passed
other worms in the main corridor, and each time those other worms readily
accepted Deek’s fabricated story. It looked as if this plan might work, and as
the two kept reminding each other and themselves, they had nothing to lose.
Something, Chuntha realized, was amiss. She had seeded each opening she had
passed along the edge of the
Sunless
Sea
with a search hornet. If there was even a suspicion of an exit, she had sent
one of her magical insects to check it. So far, each that reported back had
failed to detect her prey. Some had not yet returned, but Chuntha began to grow
restless. Unless this barbarian could somehow grow wings of his own, it was
impossible for him to have traveled this far. Her boat’s speed far exceeded
that of a walking man, and even a runner would have trouble in maintaining such
a pace for long. But… if it were not possible for the man and his companions to
have passed where she now floated, it could mean only one thing: her quarry had
gone the other way.
Chuntha slapped her bare thigh, sending a quiver through the taut muscle. Of
course! Why had she not thought of that before? She had assumed that they would
flee from pursuit back the way they had come. That assumption could be, she
realized now, a mistake.
She wondered if the wizard had also been taken in by the ploy. Had he done
so, he would be approaching her even as she sat bestilled thinking of it.
Chuntha sighed deeply. If that were the case, she would have to prepare to
battle him now, even without the powerful essence of the barbarian. There was
no way to slip past Rey did he come this way, and while she would have
preferred to fight him on her own ground, this place was as good as any.
Chuntha bent over her assemblage of magical paraphernalia and began to lay
out her most potent items. At least she had surprise on her side,
She
would find a quiet cove shrouded in shadow and await the
wizard’s arrival. With luck, she could strike him down before he became aware
of her.
Rey reached the conclusion that he moved in the wrong direction before he
had dispatched his third wasp seeker. It was not a logical and reasoned
decision, but a deeply felt reaction from his gut. He
knew
, by some
manner that he could not precisely say, that the one called Conan and the
others had gone in the opposite way.
The wizard lost no time in rectifying his error. Immediately he circled on
the dock and urged his cyclopian mounts to a run. He was worried. His chambers
were guarded, of course, but these newly arrived troublemakers had proved
rather resourceful thus far, and the nagging dread brought on by the crystal’s
prophesy sprang to the fore of his thoughts. What mischief might they do should
his guards be overcome? Not a pleasant thought. There were spells in his
inventory that could do great damage in untrained hands. In fact, maybe the
best solution to this entire affair would be to scurry home as fast as possible
and barricade himself into his chambers, backed by the full powers he kept
there.
The more he thought about it, the surer he became. If only it was not yet
too late!
“Faster!” Rey commanded the
cyclopes
.
But they were already at their highest speed, and he was jolted back and
forth in the sedan by the cadence of their running steps. Of a moment Rey had a
dark premonition about all this… and he liked it not in the least.
At the turning of the corridor approaching the witch’s chambers, Conan and
Tull suddenly leaped into view of the four large worms standing guard.
“Yaah!”
Conan screamed, whirling his
sword overhead.
Tull also hopped about, making meaningless noises and waving his arms.
The worms got the point. The four of them moved as one, scooting across the
rocky floor with a speed Conan found rather amazing.
At the first sign of movement, Conan and Tull ran, drawing the worms after
them. As they pounded along the rocky floor of the corridor, Conan said,
“They move faster than you led me to believe.”
“Faster than I believed myself,” Tull panted.
Indeed, as Conan and Tull rounded another turning of the corridor, the worms
cleared the first turning in pursuit. Conan said, “It appears that we
won’t have to slow to avoid losing them.”
Tull glanced over his shoulder as the worms slithered into view behind them.
“Mitra!
Who would have expected them to be able
to slide along so quickly?”
Both men increased their speed and saved their breath for running. They
managed to maintain their lead, but just barely, and a slip or slowing now
would allow their pursuers to catch them all too quickly.
Elashi and Lalo waited until the guard worms were out of sight,
then
quickly darted to the entrance of the witch’s chambers.
Lalo took the lead and in a moment they were inside an antechamber. Glow-fungus
covered the walls and the way was easy to discern.
“I hope that the witch did not think to leave magical wards in
place,” Lalo said, his voice a whisper.
“
Now
you think of this!”
“I did not hear
you
voice such a concern earlier, Elashi dear.
Perhaps you have been with Conan too long… some of his lack of wit may have
tainted you.”
“I have not the time to properly educate you, you grinning fool,”
she said. “We have a job to do.”
They made their way through the antechamber and into a large and high-ceilinged
room. In the center of it lay a large bed of silken cushions, and various items
of furniture stood against the walls: chests, dressers, trunks, and an
assortment of boxes, large and small.
“This must be the place,” Elashi said.
“As always, your perception amazes me. Certainly this is the
place.”
“Shut up and look for jewels!”
Quickly, the pair of them moved forward.
The Harskeel did not plan to be thwarted this time. Regardless of the cost,
it intended to have Conan and his blade. Its idea was not overly complex. When
Conan was spotted, the Harskeel intended to launch all of the fifteen or so
bats still in its command at the barbarian lout. That Conan would die and be
drained of blood quickly was a given, but before he was completely desanguineous,
the Harskeel would dart in and seize the barbarian’s sword and blood it. A few
drops would suffice; it was, after all, not the quantity but the quality of the
fluid that mattered. True, the Harskeel would not have the pleasure of watching
Conan die slowly, suffering for the grief he had caused, but at this stage of
the game, the end was paramount. One sometimes had to forgo the lesser
pleasures for the greater. All that the Harskeel desired at this point was to
achieve its main goal… and then depart these cursed caves forever.
It hurried along the path, eager for the finish to its quest.
Time dragged, and Chuntha began to worry anew. That Bastard should have
arrived by now. That the wizard had not marched into her trap bothered the
witch greatly. She saw two possibilities: one, that he had somehow been made
aware of her and held back, or two, he had also discerned that the quarry he
and Chuntha mutually sought had taken another route.
The witch decided that she must know which was the case, and quickly. She
plucked one of the red hornets from its prison, enlarged it, and dispatched it
with instructions: “Go along this waterway until you see Katamay Rey the
wizard. Do not allow him to see you, and return immediately and report.”
In an eyeblink the enchanted hornet was gone.
Chuntha sat back down upon the raft and waited.
Rey’s thralls made good time. The wizard’s trip toward his own chambers
progressed rapidly. At one point, over the clop-clop of his Cyclopes’ heavy
tread upon the never-ending dock, he thought he heard a buzzing sound, but when
looked around, he saw nothing. It did not matter. That Bitch was still in the
area somewhere, but likely far behind him and going in the wrong direction.
Surely she had made the same mistake as he, and that was her problem and not
his own.
Slowly the guard worms gained upon the two running men. Conan glanced over
his shoulder and realized that it would be only a matter of time before the
giant beasts overtook him and Tull, an unpleasant thought. They had to do something
fairly soon; the older man’s labored breathing told the Cimmerian that Tull
neared exhaustion.
“Can… they… climb?” Conan managed.
“Not… well,” Tull
said,
his voice almost
a gasp.
“Good. Turn to the right.”
This last phrase came as the two reached a fork in the tunnel. If Conan’s
memory served, they had already taken that tunnel once and circled back, and
there was a rather sheer wall leading up to a narrow ledge not far ahead.
Several boulders lay upon that ledge, itself four or five times the height of a
tall man.
True to his recall, the steep wall loomed ahead. Conan, who had long since
sheathed his blade for more efficient running, pointed at the wall.
“There! Climb!”
Tull needed no clarification, and neither did he waste his breath on
answering. He merely nodded once.
The pair reached’the wall and began to ascend. Conan, whose early years had
been spent in the cold clime and jagged peaks of Cimmeria, could climb anything
that offered even the smallest of grip for his fingers. Within a few heartbeats
he was to the ledge. Tull, for all his advanced age and lack of practice,
arrived upon the ledge not far behind Conan. Climb or die seemed to bestow a
certain skill upon the older man that Conan had not suspected.
“Now… what?”
Tull managed between labored
breaths. “We are trapped, even though they cannot reach us.”
Conan, already moving toward a boulder twice the size of
his head, said, “Perhaps not.
A hard enough rain might persuade
them to leave.”
Tull took Conan’s intent quickly and moved toward a slightly smaller rock.
Below, the four squirming guards rattled against the cliff’s face. One of
them began scraping part of his underbelly over a flat patch of rock. In a
moment Conan realized that the sound thus produced was a fair counterfeit for
speech.
“C-c-come d-d-down!” the scraping seemed to say. The language was
one Conan had heard in Hyperborea several years past, and its meaning was clear
enough.
Lifting the rock over his head, Conan leaned over the edge of the shelf upon
which he and Tull stood, and hurled the rock down upon the worms.
The boulder hit the worm nearest the cliff, and the sound of the rock
smashing the worm was most satisfying. Dark icteroid fluid sprayed and oozed
from the crushed flesh, and the beast flailed about in its death throes.
Tull’s rock also found its mark, bouncing from a second worm and doing less
damage but enough to ensure the worm’s demise. This one jittered madly to and
fro before slowing to a post-death nervous quiver halfway across the width of
the cave.
The remaining pair of worms withdrew to what they must have considered a
safe distance. Conan found another rock nearly as large as the first he had
thrown, and hurled it at them. The rock missed, but its path was beyond where
they lay, and both worms hastily retreated past the point where the rock had
impacted.
After appearing to confer for a moment, one of the worms wiggled back and
forth ever the rocky floor, sending another message to Conan and Tull.
“W-e-we’ll b-b-be b-back!”
With that, the two turned and slithered away.
“What do you think?” Tull asked, watching as the worms vanished
into the tunnel.
Conan shrugged.
“Gone for help, perhaps.
Or
they have remembered their primary duty is to guard the witch’s chambers. It
matters not. Come, let us depart.”
With that, Conan descended, Tull standing guard with an uplifted rock until
the younger man was down. Conan drew his sword and watched while Tull clambered
down the rock face. The worms did not reappear.