Zura’s Tale
Leading Hero to the rail, Zura said, “There, see what becomes of my enemies!” She laughed and pointed out across the sky to where Kuranes’ crippled vessel foundered and shook and trembled as shot after shot battered it to a hulk. The corpse-pirates—those of them who survived—were off
Skymaster
’s deck now and aboard the other black ship, and it was that ship which kept up the devastating bombardment.
Even as Hero watched through narrowed, flinching eyes, the man-o’-war’s decks were raked with a broadside. Her masts and rigging were carried away at a stroke and green vapor writhed over everything. Gaping holes in the vessel’s hull issued clouds of the stuff, and its effect on
Skymaster
was obvious and terminal beyond any doubt. As the last of her flotation chambers were ruptured, so she rolled over and slid down out of the sky, leaving rapidly dispersing green smudges to mark her trail. Hero could not tell if anyone remained alive on the doomed ship, but certainly none would live through the fall.
Zura laughed again and leaned far out over the rail to watch
skymaster
’s dreadful descent. No master of the
sky now, that once proud ship, but a tumbling plank, a rag of sailcloth and a whistle of air through tattered, fluttering rigging.
“Thus perish all my enemies,” said Zura triumphantly.
“Your enemies?” growled Hero with a half-sneer. “It was you attacked us, remember?” For a single moment he considered tipping her overboard and only the fact that they were under the silent scrutiny of a horde of sword-wielding zombies stayed his hand. “And was
Cloud Treader
your enemy too?”
No sooner were the words out than he could have bitten off his tongue, for Zura at once straightened up and turned to him. Her eyes widened as she leaned forward. “Ah! You know of that, do you? And what else do you know, I wonder?”
“Er,” he answered, thinking quickly, and added quite inanely, “bad news travels fast in the dreamlands.”
“Were there survivors, then?” Zura frowned. “That was careless of me …” And her eyes narrowed to the merest slits. “But if Kuranes knows it was Zura sank his ship, why has he sent out another to its doom? Or was she on some special mission, perhaps? Where was the man-o’-war bound, my brave young man of the waking world?”
Again Hero wracked his brains for an answer. “She was bound … for Ilek-Vad!” he finally answered, and held his breath.
“Possibly,” Zura said at last, “since Kuranes counts Randolph Carter as one of his greatest friends. Would they cement a pact against me then? It would avail them naught.”
“I know nothing of any pact,” said Hero. “My colleagues and I were visiting friends in Serannian. The captain of
Skymaster
—now gone down with his ship,
poor man—was an acquaintance. Since he was under orders from Kuranes to sail for Ilek-Vad, and since that city was our destination also—”
“He let you sail with him, eh? Well—what’s your name?”
“Hero,” he answered. “David Hero.” And he hoped it was a name she had never heard of.
Apparently she never had. “Well, David Hero, you may never see Ilek-Vad. You may never see beyond the deck of this ship! Do you know that?”
He nodded. “I’m neither blind nor daft.”
“Just so,” and she gave a sharp nod of her head. “Nor am I—and I do as I will with my prisoners!”
“Then do with me as you will,” he said, and somehow managed to keep the beat of his heart steady.
Her serpent’s gaze seemed to probe his soul and for long moments she was silent. Then she said: “You are either very brave or very foolish. Perhaps both. Certainly you are different, as are all men from the waking world. It was clever of you to come aboard
The Cadaver
that way. If you’d stayed aboard
Skymaster
you’d now be dead.”
“Perhaps I’d be better dead,” said Hero under his breath.
“Eh?” said Zura suspiciously. “Do you mock me?”
“I said, certainly I’d be dead,” Hero lied.
Again her eyes became the merest slits. “Indeed you would … But know this, David Hero: alive or dead, either way you would still be mine. The only difference is that dead you’d obey my commands more readily; though fortunately for you, much more woodenly. You’ll understand my meaning—soon.”
She turned from the rail and waved her moldering “men” aside. Without another word she made for her cabin and Hero, who had no desire to stay where he
was, surrounded by stinking corpses, quickly followed her. On her heels he breathlessly asked: “What of my friends? Eldin the Wanderer and Limnar Dass?”
“They are safe for now,” she answered, opening the black, gold-inlaid door of her cabin and beckoning him inside. As he moved to pass her she arched her body against him and said, “Be sure you do nothing to change that.”
Briefly, as light flooded in through the open door, Hero saw a richly furnished, low-beamed room whose fittings were of gold and whose drapes were of a black, funereal velvet. Then Zura closed the door and it was as if they stood in gold-flecked blackness.
“Come, David Hero, sit with me and talk. Since you are coming from Serannian, you must know a great deal of that sky-floating city. Perhaps you know things which I do not.”
“I think,” he answered, sitting on the edge of the bed where she now indolently sprawled, “that I should rather know about you. After all, I’m a mere commoner—a man late of the waking world, yes, but a commoner for all that—while you … why, you’re a princess!”
“A princess, yes,” she answered moodily in the gloom of the place. “Princess Zura of Zura—Mistress of Death!”
“But from what I’ve seen of you,” he pressed, “that’s the way you like it.”
“I have lived with it, grown with it, reveled in it!” she answered. “I would have it no other way. Listen and I will explain …” As she spoke she got down from the bed and sat at Hero’s feet where she began to loosen his boots. Her movements were languid but sure and Hero made no move to stop her. Indeed he felt half drunk
with her sensuality but his ears were wide open and receptive to her every word.
“When the dreamlands were young a certain wandering sorcerer fell in love with a girl who died before he could make his love known. Her death, though accidental, was horrible: she drowned in the Southern Sea off the shores of Zura—at least where the land of Zura now lies—and her body washed ashore there. Using his sorcerous powers, the bitter magician returned her to life; that is to say, he made her one of the undead, a zombie. Then for a little while he could talk to her, and she to him; but while his love burned like a fire hers was born of slavery and could never be real. There is no love in death, you see, and she could only say to him those words he bade her say.”
Now Zura kneeled on the bed beside Hero, slowly peeling off his jacket. As she did so, she continued with her story. “In a little while, however, the sorcerer’s dead love could no longer repeat even the few words he demanded of her. The human tongue is soft and does not last long after death. Still the sorcerer would not relax his hold over his love, and where he went she followed—until she no longer could. Then, blind to her loathsomeness, he stayed with her; and their tent stood in that place where now stand the Charnel Gardens …
“At last the morning came when, rising up from his blind madness of remorse and anguish, the sorcerer saw his love as she really was. He saw the worms crawling in her and the bones sticking through in places; and when he commanded her to open her eyes, then he saw the pus that seeped from peeling eyeballs. And tearing at his hair, at last he commanded that she be still; and so she sank down and melted into corruption …”
Zura paused a while to push Hero’s shirt back from his shoulders and slide its sleeves down his arms. She
kissed his neck and ran trembling fingers over his powerful shoulders. Hero, every fiber of his body burning, fought to keep his hands still and his heart quiet; but it was a losing battle. The blood was rising in him and Zura’s perfume was in his nostrils. Her nearness and her silken hands worked on him like powerful magnets on iron filings.
Suddenly stifled, he stirred himself up a little and stared about at a room grown more visible as his eyes became accustomed to its dim light. The small, round windows were of red glass which added a ruby shade to the infernally wicked look of the place, and Zura’s bedsheets were of black silk. Now she was stroking his hair, pushing him back until he lay stretched out.
“Go on with your story,” he gulped, his nostrils detecting something other than the heavy reek of perfume as Zura’s tongue flickered over her lips and she breathed close to his face. She drew back, paused, pouted, then continued:
“When the sorcerer saw what was become of his love—and more especially when he discovered that his body, too, was now diseased, infected by her rottenness—his madness returned tenfold. And this was the weird he worked in his great madness:
“That henceforth Zura would be the final dwelling place of all in the dreamlands who die fearful deaths. That such undead would hasten to Zura, there to serve their evil mistress, also named Zura, who would be the only living being in that entire land of death. Moreover, his weird was greater than this: for the sorcerer knew that a living princess must surely die if she were constantly surrounded only by legions of the undead. And so his curse contained this clause:
“That while Zura’s princess must love the dead, she
might on occasion
renew
her strength by battening upon the love of the living!”
“And he used sorcery to ensure that his weird would come to pass?” gasped Hero in Zura’s embrace, his head swimming with the closeness of the place.
“Aye,” she answered, “great, mad sorcery!”
“And the name of his love,” cried Hero as he sat up. “Of the one who was drowned in the Southern Sea. What was it?”
“Have you not guessed?” she answered, her fingers at his belt.
“Zura!” he shuddered. “And now you, who bear her name, would renew yourself with me!” Head reeling, he jumped from the bed. And so overcome was he by opiate fumes, and so weak from the lusts which had near-destroyed him, Hero almost fell. Instead, stumbling about, he collided with Zura where she had risen to her feet in a rage. His hand caught at her single garment and tore it down—
And despite the dimness of that room, now Hero recognized the source of the repellent musk whose queasy reek he had detected above that of poppy-essence and the scents of hideous, hybrid orchids; and he knew why Zura’s dress had been designed to cover only certain regions of her body. For these were the sites of contamination—and he had almost become a sacrifice to her revitalization, her “renewal”!
Zura’s upper arms bore the deep, black indentations of corpse fingers, and the heart of her womanhood was puffy and leprous with decay. Great raised blotches obscured what should have been the perfect outlines of her thighs and belly!
Staggering away from her, Hero snatched up his jacket and threw it over his shoulders. He tripped on something and sat down with a thump on the richly carpeted
floor, and finding his boots he automatically began to pull them on. And one mad question rang over and over in his brain like a peal of crazed bells, until at last he found it bursting from his tongue.
“Zura—damned bitch of hell—what did your last lover die of?”
“My last lover?” she answered with a shriek of hideous laughter. “What did he die of? So you are blind after all, David Hero. Fool, he was
already
dead!”
Zura’s Delight
With Zura’s mad laughter ringing in his ears, Hero stumbled to his feet and found the cabin door. As he lifted the latch and threw the door wide, Zura opened a large, hitherto unnoticed cupboard set flush with the wall at the head of her bed.
“My lover?” the demon princess screamed again. “Would you really like to know him, David Hero? Then know him!” And out from the dark recess of her cupboard stepped forward a tall, nightmare apparition whose jerky, creaking movements and moldering aspect froze the adventurer solid where he stood framed in Zura’s doorway. The thing had a short, wide-bladed sword in its claw of a hand, and as Zura pointed at Hero and screamed a command, so it lurched forward.
Galvanized into action, Hero ducked under the zombie’s arc of steel and caught at the stringy wrist which controlled the sword. A moment more and he had wrested the weapon free—the entire hand, too!—and with a single sweep decapitated the cadaver which had been Zura’s “lover.” Collapsing, the body of the poor thing fell against him and threw spindly arms about his neck. With a cry of horror and loathing Hero tried to
disengage himself, only to be surrounded in a moment by the rest of ship’s graveyard crew. No longer having room to move, still he surged and bounded in their midst as they took away his sword and heaped themselves upon him. He found himself forced to his knees, saw the bright gleam of a blade where bony hand lifted it above his head, and—
“Hold!” came Zura’s command, her voice ringing loud and clear over the creak of leathery joints and the clacking of bones. “No, no, lads, don’t kill him. Not that way, at least. I want him to come to me as a corpse, but he can’t come without his head, now can he? So let’s play a little game with our guests instead, should we? That most
delightful
of all games.” Her voice became a dangerous purr: “Poor David, did my perfumes make your head spin? Well, what better way to clear a dizzy head than a short walk in the sweet, clear air, eh?”
She laughed and made to chuck Hero under his chin where he was held in tight restraint, but he jerked back his head with a growl of disgust. Zura’s eyes hardened and her lips curled into a sneer. She turned swiftly and pointed to the ship’s rail. “Get out the plank!” she snapped her orders to the zombie crew. “There’s no shorter, sweeter walk in all the dreamlands than that!”
While Hero was roped back into position alongside his colleagues at the base of the mainmast, a narrow plank was dragged into view and made fast to the deck so that one end projected far out over the abyss of air. Limnar Dass had regained consciousness by now and his eyes were taking in all of the activity at the ship’s rail. To Hero he said:
“This game she plans for us. Do you know it, my friend?”
“I’ve heard of it,” Hero gloomily answered. “A so-called
‘sport’ of olden-day pirates in the waking world. This must be Zura’s version. But better by far than some of the games she likes to play.”
Eldin snorted his disgust. “When I saw her drag you away into her cabin there, I said to myself, ‘well, that’s us in the clear. She’ll be so taken with him that we’ll all three be set free.’ Huh! I might have known you’d let me down again. It would be a different story if she’d chosen me.”
“Would it?” said Hero. “Let me tell you, old lad, you’d be far better off with a leper in the final stages of disintegration. Our little Zura there is a mobile cesspit!”
“Hero,” answered Eldin. “let’s not fool each other now, not in what promises to be our final hour. Truth to tell, I’d rather
live
in a damn cesspit than walk that plank!”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Hero shook his head.
“Damn me, I know my own mind!” snarled the other. “Don’t tell me what I would or—”
“Why don’t you two shut up!” hissed Dass. “If you must fight, save it until they cut us free of this mast. Personally, if I’m to die I’ll take as many of these zombies with me as I can.”
“The crew doesn’t mean a thing without Zura,” Hero informed. “She’s the threat. If you’ve got to die a martyr—certainly if you want to save Serannian—Zura’s the one to kill.
“What did you find out?” Dass urgently questioned. “Quickly, for one of us might yet escape to carry a message back to Kuranes. Have you discovered why Zura wishes to destroy Serannian?”
Both Hero and Eldin looked at Dass in amazement. “Escape?” said Eldin. “Limnar, you never fail to astound me. Sometimes I think you’re daft as Hero! How in hell can we possibly escape?”
“Damn it, I don’t know,” Dass answered, “but if—just
if
—one of us does live through this …”
“All right,” said Hero, “listen and I’ll tell you what I think. Zura the woman told me that anyone in the dreamlands who dies a horrible death ends up in Zura the land, as a zombie in her Charnel Gardens. In other words, all her subjects are dead. Well now, during the Bad Days there must have been a fairly regular flow of unhappily defunct folk into Zura, but since then things have been pretty quiet …”
“So?” Eldin pressed, interested despite himself.
“Corpses,” Hero informed, “rot! Zura the woman needs a regular source of supply. The fall of Serannian out of the sky would mean a massive injection of life—excuse me, death—into her Charnel Gardens. I think that that was the initial idea, but since then it’s expanded. Gone to her head. Now she wants to be Queen of Nightmares, mistress of all she surveys. And where the dreamlands are concerned, she wants to survey all!”
“She wants to murder everyone in the land of Earth’s dreams?” Dass gasped.
“That’s the way I read it, yet,” Hero nodded. “And it looks like we’re to be among her first victims. Here she comes now!”
“Him,” said Zura, striding up close and pointing at Eldin. “The ungainly one. See how the ropes chafe him? Poor creature. Him we shall set free from his misery at once … From all misery!”
“Ah, Zura, you’ve come to your senses at last!” cried Eldin. “Hero would be no good to a woman like you. He’s only a pup in my employ. Come now, set me free and we’ll—”
“Silence!” she snapped, and to her crew: “Fetch the dog!”
Kicking and struggling and roaring like a wounded
bull, Eldin was cut loose and dragged across the deck, then prodded with sword-points until he swayed out onto the narrow plank. A wind had come up and
The Cadaver
was rolling a little, so that Eldin shuffled and danced to keep his balance as he was prodded to the plank’s outer extreme. To get him into position, Zura’s zombie crew used long, sharply pointed poles.
Hero had gone chalk white against the black mast. Straining his neck to watch Eldin’s performance, his muscles never ceased from bunching and cording as he put every effort into bursting free; but all in vain. Dass, too, was distressed almost to tears. “One at a time,” he kept saying over and over. “One at a time, and we don’t stand a chance. And poor Eldin, he’s first to go. One at a time, Hero, one at a time …”
“Oh, for my sword,” roared Eldin as he wavered and teetered at the end of the plank. “Is this any way for a man to go? With empty hand? A man who’s been a fighter all his dream-life?”
Hearing him, Zura nodded to one of her crew and Eldin’s straight sword was produced. She took it, weighed it for a second, gave it into the crumbling hand of a great black Pargan who threw it, without delay, toward Eldin. At that exact moment the ship gave a great heave to starboard as a sidewind caught at her sails. Eldin, thrown off balance, nevertheless reached for the sword and snatched it from the air. That was the end of it. He cast one last despairing glance in the direction of Hero and Dass. For a second only his eyes met Hero’s—then he was gone.
“Damn and blast your foul black heart
,
Zura!”
Hero howled, anguish choking off his words on her name. He gasped a while longer, gulping at the air. Then brokenly, more quietly, he continued. “Throw me down next, Zura. Me …”
“As you wish,” she nodded, ropes of black hair blowing in the wind. She came closer and stood on tiptoe to stare into Hero’s eyes. “But first … a parting kiss?” She licked her lips and held her face up to him.
The agony slowly went out of Hero’s eyes. He smiled a strange smile and bent his face down to her—and spat at her point blank. She fell back, wiped the thick spittle from her wrathful brow and pointed a trembling hand toward the plank. “Go, then, fool!” she hissed. “But we shall meet again, you and I, never fear. In the Charnel Gardens …”
Hero was cut free from the mast and without delay was bundled onto the plank. He too was given his sword, and at the last he turned to face his tormentors like a great wolf at bay. Crouching there, inches from eternity, his eyes found Zura’s and bored into them. For a second she met his ferocious gaze, then could meet it no longer. And when next she looked Hero too was gone.
That left only Limnar Dass, and without a murmur, head held high, he followed his friends of so few days along the plank and out into the sea of air. Zura watched his tumbling, rapidly shrinking figure until it entered clouds where they had gathered below like foam of ether. Only then did she turn from the rail.
A picture of Hero’s face, furious, full of hatred and loathing, burned in her mind’s eye. She felt a chill wind on her like some strange omen.
“Set sail for Zura,” she ordered. Then, lifting her voice: “For Zura, I said, and quickly! That’s enough sport for one day …”