As they parked their bicycles and made for
Skymaster
’s gangplank, a sudden commotion in the crowding sailors and sightseers who thronged the wharf side some distance away attracted their attention. Something striding, metallic, purposeful, was coming toward them. Eldin took one look at Hero’s suddenly frightened face and yelled:
“All aboard who’s going aboard! C‘mon, Dass, let’s move it. Make way, there! Make way for the cap’n.’ And he dragged both Dass and the strangely dazed Hero through the crowd and up the gangplank. Once aboard, without pause, while Dass looked on in utter astonishment, Hero shook off his peculiar paralysis and he and Eldin directed that the gangplank be raised at once and the ship steered away from the quay.
Finally, in a tone which bordered on the hysterical, the captain demanded: “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’ve got us all aboard, fair enough, but
I’m
the captain of this ship. We sail when
I
say we sail!”
“And are we ready to sail?” asked Hero breathlessly, his anxious eyes staring at the wharf where the colorful crowds melted to let through a metal, vaguely anthropomorphic being.
“Yes,” answered Dass, “we’re ready.”
“And do you really want to go a-questing with us for the sake of the King and for Serennian?”
“You know I do.”
Before Hero could say another word, Eldin roared: “
Then get this bloody hulk away from the quayside!
”
Now Dass spotted the Curator making straight for
Skymaster
as she pulled slowly clear of the quay, and the look of blank amazement on his face slowly turned to one of boiling anger. “Why, you—” he began.
“Later,” said Hero, his face regaining a little of its color as the gap widened between quayside and ship. “For now—please tell your crew to make haste!”
Dass swallowed hard, then shouted out a few tense commands. The ship’s scarlet sails billowed and she rode out onto the ocean of air. Now the Curator stood on the quayside, his arms extended to their full—which fell short of
Skymaster
’s dangling ropes by a good yard. Dass looked down at him briefly, then turned to Hero. “Give it to me,” he commanded. “Give it to me now, or damn you—I’ll take her in again!”
“Come now,” Hero began, at which the captain put his hands to his mouth and made as if to bellow more orders. “All right!” Hero shouted. “Here, take the damned thing!” And he handed Dass the great ruby. Dass looked at it once, turned and threw it straight at the Curator. With a movement so fast that it defied the human eye, the metal man snatched the ruby from midair. He gazed at the stone with his crystal eyes, then switched that gaze to Hero and Eldin where they stood together at the rail. His eyes turned a glowing scarlet and one off this metal arms slowly came up to point out and away, far over the sea.
“The end of a beautiful friendship,” grunted Eldin. And to the Curator he shouted: “Don’t worry, old clanker, we’re going,”
“He’s not only telling you to go,” said Dass with grim finality. “He’s warning you never to come back. Not ever!”
Sky-Pirates of Zura
The plot was to have been that
Skymaster
would sail close to Zura, put off the adventurers at some advantageous point inland, and that they would then proceed as best they could on foot, employing their natural talents to get into Zura’s heartland and there obtain samples of the green vapor. As King Kuranes had had it, the trick would then be to get out again.
As plans go it was a simple one. Simple things are often easy, and the easiest way is often the best … On this occasion, however …
On the third day out of Serannian, toward evening, as they passed high over Oriab and headed for the distant coastline of the Southern Sea, gray sails were spied in the southeast. Dass knew well enough that this could only be a pirate; this was not the Cerenerian Sea and therefore no other ship (except one of Kuranes’ own fleet, of which none but
Skymaster
was in the vicinity) could possibly sail the skies of this region.
Northwest of
Skymaster
’s position lay a thick cloudbank. Dass turned the prow of his vessel for cover and raced toward the clouds. Alas, Zura’s pirate fleet was growing! Out of the clouds sailed two more black ships
to block the man-o’-war’s escape, their cannons firing even as they came—and one of them had a Kraken figurehead whose crimson eyes burned like malignant fires.
“Aye, well, we’ve cannon of our own, now!” cried Dass. “Which we didn’t have before Zura sank
Cloud Treader.
” He shook his fist at the enemy. “More conventional cannon than yours, true, but damned destructive for all that. Get the ports open, lads,” he roared. “Let’s give these dogs a taste of their own medicine!”
Still cleaving for the dense cloudbank,
Skymaster
’s cannons roared and rattled, and the stink of powder and hot metal came reeking up to Dass, Hero and Eldin on the bridge. And whether by sheer good fortune or expert gunnery made little difference, but no sooner had
Skymaster
loosed her first fusillade than two of the masts of the closest pirate crashed down, taking the third mast with them. In another moment the ship turned broadside to
Skymaster,
whose second barrage literally cleared the decks. The crippled black ship drifted away, silent and ghostly, and disappeared into the clouds.
Meanwhile the Kraken-prowed pirate had not been idle. Her cannons had poured shots into
Skymaster
’s flank, balls which issued green vapor within her hull’s flotation chambers. Already the man-o’-war was listing badly to port, and behind her the first-sighted pirate rapidly gained on her. A fool could have seen that she would never make the cloudbank. Dass was no fool; neither were Hero and Eldin fools.
“We’re done for!” cried Hero in impotent rage.
“Skymaster
will go the same way as
Cloud Treader:
down into the drink! Damn their black, piratical hearts!”
“Never mind the histrionics,” snarled Eldin. “And anyway, it’s not quite the same, is it?
Cloud Treader
didn’t matter a damn to us, but
Skymaster
does. Hell’s teeth, we’re on board her!”
Now, because she was listing to port,
Skymaster
’s gunners couldn’t get the necessary elevation to hit the Kraken-prowed vessel. Instead she blazed away at the third ship, just coming into range of her starboard cannons. The pirate flagship, seeing
Skymaster
’s plight, drew closer and pulled alongside.
“They’re going to board us!” shouted Hero. “Now that’s something we can handle. Eldin, quick, up into the rigging.” He scrambled aloft with Eldin close behind him. Limnar Dass caught on fast and followed them, shouting down to his crew and pikemen to make ready their hand-weapons.
Now, with their hulls almost touching,
Skymaster
and the pirate slid by one another. As they passed so the vast majority of the gray-cowled pirate crew leapt aboard the crippled ship, swords at the ready. This was exactly what Hero had anticipated, and as the pirates left their ship he swung aboard her. Eldin and Dass followed suit, dropping lithe as cats onto the black decks of the enemy.
In another moment the two ships had separated, stranding the three aboard the pirate. Since the crew of that black vessel was now greatly reduced, however, they found themselves in a far healthier fix than the men left behind on
Skymaster.
At least they had a deal more room in which to make their play.
Hero wasted neither time nor opportunity but leapt at the closest pirate and sliced his cowl-hidden head clean from his body. Down went the man without a sound—without even a crimson spurt of blood—and another sprang to take his place. This one Hero stabbed in the heart, his sword passing through him as if he were made of cheese … except that when he dragged the
blade free the man failed to fall but kept right on fighting! Out of instinct and desperation Hero struck again, and this time his blade tore aside the pirate’s hood. Beneath it—
—A fleshless skull leered with empty sockets and rotting teeth!
And now Hero knew where he had smelled that fetor before—that reek which made vile the very air aboard the black ship—that stink of death and of those who should have lain themselves down long ago! However inarticulately, Eldin’s howl of horror told how he had made the same discovery, while Limnar’s
hiss
and gasp spoke for him. The three of them were fighting corpses, dead men who felt nothing of their blows and came on secure in the knowledge that they could not die twice!
Indeed, judging by the utter recklessness of their attack, it seemed that they must long for death, or at least an end to this monstrous undeath. Back to back the three men stood, forming a triangle as their rotting assailants crowded in on them.
“Go for their heads,” cried Eldin, his voice a hoarse, nightmare croak. “If you cut off their heads, they fall!”
“Same goes for their legs,” yelled Dass. “They keep on fighting, but they’re not so nimble!” Even as he yelled his sword stuck in the skull of one leaping corpse and was dragged from his hand. Throwing himself forward in a frantic attempt to regain the weapon, he tripped over a headless heap of bones and tattered sinews and fell sprawling. Instantly the stinking crush pressed forward, trampling him down and circling Hero and Eldin with a band of flashing steel. Then—
“Take them alive!” came a laughing, tinkling female voice from close at hand. “Alive, do you hear? Let’s have some fun aboard
The Cadaver.
We too seldom have living guests to entertain. To entertain
us,
that is!”
And again there came the tinkling laugh.
Now if words such as these had issued from a burly, bearded, peg-legged brute in a tricorn hat, and if they had been framed in a deep, coarse, bellicose voice, then they should not have been out of place. As it happened, when Hero and Eldin disbelievingly turned their heads in the voice’s direction, the shock of what they saw was so great that they almost dropped their swords.
“Enter the pirate chief,” whispered Hero in awe. “And what a chief!”
“If that’s a pirate,” said Eldin with a gulp, “it’s me for the bounding main!”
The brief lull in the fighting was all Zura’s corpse-pirates had needed. Two of them, coming on Hero and Eldin from behind, pinioned their arms so that others could step forward and wrest their swords from them. Dass was dragged unconscious to his feet and lashed to the mainmast, as were the two adventurers. Only then did the pirate vessel’s mistress come forward, and only then was her astonishing beauty fully revealed.
Tall and leggy, she was clothed in a single fantastic garment which covered her arms, back, belly and thighs but left the rest of her body quite naked. Golden sandals accentuated the scarlet paint of her toenails and tight, wide golden bands on her wrists drew one’s eyes to her slender, tapering, perfectly formed hands … but only for a moment. The rest of this Princess of Zura was likewise perfectly formed, and no man’s eyes—lest they be already sightless—could possibly resist its beauty.
And yet it was a tainted beauty for all that. An almost visible aura of evil seemed to surround her, and outward from her washed waves of near-tangible terror. Her huge, black, slanting eyes that shone and missed nothing, seemed imbued with the hypnotic gaze of a serpent;
and serpentlike, too, were the ropes of shining black hair which fell about her shoulders.
Her lips were full and red—too full, perhaps, too red—and they parted as she breathed to permit the flash of teeth like twin bars of white light. A thin film of heavily perfumed oil covered her body, giving her breasts a milky sheen where they stood proud and high and tipped with dark-brown buds.
And now, as she paraded before her captives, hands on hips and surveying them first over one softly rounded shoulder, then the other, so Eldin whispered: “Man, she’s
edible!
And I know which bits I’d eat first!”
“Not likely you’ll get the chance,” Hero growled back. “And anyway, I’d employ a food-taster, first, if I were you. Edible? Carnivorous, more like. Why, just look at that mouth! That lovely maw of hers could suck out a man’s very soul!”
It seemed that Zura might have heard him, or at least divined his thoughts, for she stepped closer and as her gaze swept Hero up and down it slowly turned from one of proud insolence to open admiration. “Men of the waking world,” she finally said, and she cast a cursory sideways glance at Eldin. “Both of you—but you’ve come a long way from your origins. A pair of rebels who can’t seem to find a place to settle in the dreamlands. Am I right?”
Hero nodded. “Near as damn,” he said. “And what of you? What do you do with this brotherhood of corpses?”
“Do with them?” she laughed and threw back her ropes of hair. “I rule over them! For I am Zura, Princess of the Charnel Gardens and soon to be Queen of all Nightmares. As for these,” and she swept her hand to indicate the ranks of undead, “these are my minions, the
zombie denizens of Zura, the Land of Pleasures Unattained.”
Her eyes returned to Hero and narrowed seductively. She licked her lips and reached out a slim hand in which a razor-honed, curved dagger was lightly clasped. Deliberately she sliced upward from his navel, and the buttons of his jacket and shirt went flying to the black boards of the deck.
Now she put away the dagger and stroked the adventurer’s broad chest, her huge eyes widening again at the strong pounding of his heart and the pulse which showed its steady beat in his throat. Then she stepped back from him. “Cut this one loose,” she said to her cowled, silently crowding crew, “and bring him to the rail. Let him see the fate of them that defy Zura. Then …” and again she licked her lips, “then we shall see what we shall see.”