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Witch of the Four Winds ? When the Idols Walked
By John Jakes OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1978 Exeter Limited Partnership
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-6329-7
CHAPTER 1
THE MANWORM PIT
When Brak woke shortly after sunrise, he discovered that a strange thing had happened in the night.
For three days now, the land had risen steadily upward from a lush and pleasant river delta toward this forbidding region of gray slate, withered shrubs and distant thrusting peaks whose summits hid behind blowing clouds of mist. The land was lonely, as if nothing human dwelled there. The savage terrain suited Brak's melancholy turn of mind.
It had been less than a month since that painful evening in the grove of fig trees outside the great city. There, he had reluctantly parted from the beautiful, dark-haired young woman named Rhea.
Queen Rhea, of Phrixos.
It was difficult for the unlettered barbarian from the wild lands of the north to think of her in terms of her title and power. He had saved her from death on the infernal river Phrixos, then carried her away from the last of those who would have usurped her power by force. And in the great city, he had labored like a beast for her in a granite quarry. Bent his back for a six-month in order to accumulate the dinshas the metalsmiths would take in exchange for a great shield.
This shield, wrought into a symbolic design, he gave to Rhea. With it she could return to her people, who thought her dead, and convince them that she had lived through the ordeal of the sacred river and come back bearing a talisman of the approval of her gods. She could claim the throne then, and rule well and wisely—
But there had nearly been no parting at all. That night in the grove, he discovered that he loved her. He nearly rode with her back to her kingdom. The call of Khurdisan the golden, his longed-for destination in the south, kept him from accompanying her. That and the knowledge that a queen could hardly share her throne with a barbarian who had been cast out by his own people in the north steppes.
So they had painfully parted. And he had ridden on to this forlorn, forbidding area of tumbled foothills where he woke to notice a strange and unsettling thing.
At sunset last night he had reached a fork in the road. One branch led generally westward, away through the rocks toward low peaks. That direction would eventually lead a traveler to the Pillars of Ebon at the far western ends of the known world.
The other branch turned to the southwest and the mist-shrouded scarps that were the beginnings of the Mountains of Smoke, eastern limits of the world and birthplace—so people said—of the various gods who held sway over kingdoms large and small.
Somehow during the night, that southeastern passage had been obliterated. Completely choked and blocked by an immense rockslide. Brak could see, higher up, the slate face from which all the boulders and rubble had sheared away, tumbling down to prevent any pilgrim from taking that particular route.
Brak shivered a little as he flung off the wolf-pelt which he used to ward off the chill of the upland nights. By a large stone, his pony was snorting and blowing gently. Brak patted its muzzle. He whispered soothing words, reached into the pouch at his waist for a handful of grains which he fed to the hungry pony. His eyes remained on the incredible jumble of rock. In effect, it dictated that he would have to take the western road whether he wished or not.
Slowly Brak ran his tongue round the inside of his mouth. He narrowed his eyes.
The rocks had fallen in the night. But he slept lightly in unfamiliar country like this.
Why, then, had he heard no sound?
In his mind he heard a voice and saw an awful sight.
He saw a man with a closely-shaven pate, aquiline nose, thin lips. The man's chin formed a sharp point. The upper parts of his ears were likewise pointed.
His eyes were huge, dark, staring, nearly all pupil. Little white showed. He had no eyelids. Evidently they had been removed by a crude surgical procedure. Light pads of scar tissue had encrusted above the sockets that held the eyes that never closed—
And the skin of that face was alive. It crawled.
Every inch of the skin was etched with tiny naked human figures, hundreds of them, intertwined and slowly writhing in postures of eternal torment. The figures were somehow prisoned within the layers of flesh and were crawling slowly there, crawling and moving and writhing in a never-ending pattern of bodies, arms, legs, torsos—
Abruptly Brak squeezed his eyelids together. This did not blot the vision. It was too deeply embedded in his mind. The voice, sepulchral, seemed to mock and taunt—
I will be there, barbarian. I will be there.
Thus had promised the Amyr of Evil upon Earth, Septegundus.
Memory of the crawling flesh of Septegundus troubled Brak's dreams much of late. He would never succeed in forgetting his first experiences in the so-called civilized world, in the kingdom of the Ice-marches, just after he came down from the steppes.
His own people had cast him out for mocking their warlike gods once too often, so he had been forced to seek his fortune elsewhere. He found the populous kingdoms of the world instantly bewildering.
In the Ice-marches, for example, he had first learned of the titanic and continuing struggle between the two great god-forces that ruled above all other gods.
Yob-Haggoth the Dark One stood like a black cloud before mankind, threatening the survival of all honor and decency. Or so said the Dark One's adversaries, those strange crypto-religious holy men, the Nestorians. In the Ice-marches Brak had been thrown in with one of their number, Friar Jerome. Thus he learned of the never-ending battle for dominion of the earth waged between the forces of the Nameless God, whose first apostle had been the ecstatic goatherd Nestoriamus, and the powers of Yob-Haggoth, whose deputy among men was the vile sorcerer, Septegundus.
In vivid detail Brak could call back the horror of the near-sacrifice at the huge, ruined stone idol that represented Yob-Haggoth: a monster thing, squat and semi-human, with its stone fists resting upon the thighs of its crossed legs and its mouth turned downward as though to curse all mankind. At the base of that idol, Brak and the Friar nearly died as blood-victims of Yob-Haggoth, in an obscene rite presided over by Septegundus and Ariane—
Ariane.
Beautiful as Rhea was beautiful. Young. Creamy-skinned. Graceful. Mouth tempting as a plum. She offered herself, and her power and influence, to Brak. She was rejected. And in the awful cataclysm when Brak and the Friar fought their way free of the sacrificial rite, the barbarian maneuvered so that Ariane was between him and the whirling, enchanted dagger her father had thrown.
The dagger buried itself in the back of the Daughter of Hell, and the idol of Yob-Haggoth disintegrated in red lightnings.
Brak and the Friar and an old, blind minstrel named Tyresias escaped. The Friar begged the big barbarian to accept the way of the Nameless God. He tried to press into his hands the god's symbol—a stone cross with arms of equal length. Puzzled and angered by the ways of so-called civilized men, Brak refused the talisman. He went on his way toward Khurdisan, the far southern paradise where—so shamans told him before he was cast out of the north steppes—the cities were of gold.
In that fashion had Brak placed himself in confrontation with Septegundus and all the power of Yob-Haggoth. As he had ridden away from the Ice-marches, the ghostly voice of the vanished wizard had threatened him—
The road is long to Khurdisan, barbarian. I will be there.
I WILL BE THERE.
Staring at the mysterious rockslide now, Brak shuddered, wondering whether, at last, he was seeing a sign of the hand of Septegundus.
A soundless avalanche? Unnatural. Impossible.
Yet perhaps his imagination was merely conjuring fear-devils. Perhaps he had slept more deeply than usual. He doubted it, but there was no way of telling.
A cloud passed over the face of the sun, casting a shadow. Brak shivered again. He shook his head and turned to his pony. He would take the only route left open to him. The westward road.
Chewing a hunk of salted meat taken from his waist-pouch, Brak mounted and started out. The cloud vanished. The sun shone bright as a metal disc.
The road wound this way and that, serpentine. The day grew hotter. Where the hoofs of his pony passed, dust whirled in tan clouds. Brak saw no other living soul. He had seen none for three full days.
When the scream ripped out on the low-moaning wind, he gave a violent start.
He grabbed for the hilt of the huge broadsword hanging at his waist. "That would be a human voice," he muttered to his pony. "Or is the wind tricking me?"
The pony obeyed the pressure of Brak's knee, halted. With his chin lifted, the yellow-haired barbarian sat listening.
Veils of dust obscured the tumbled hillsides where huge stones leaned at crazy angles. Presently Brak convinced himself that the wind had indeed deceived him. He didn't know the name of this kingdom, but he didn't much like it. He wanted to be free of it. He started the pony jogging forward again.
No doubt the memories that had troubled him all morning—foul memories of Septegundus, melancholy ones of Rhea—had filled his mind with phantoms.
High and sharp, the scream rang again.
Brak jumped to the ground. He left the pony standing at a bend in the rocky road. His broadsword glinted in the sunlight as he loped upward between boulders. Now he was convinced.
The scream was unmistakably human. Unmistakably female. And unmistakably terror-stricken.
He moved rapidly in response to the cry. The tail of the lion's hide which he wore about his hips flapped from side to side, matched by the swing of the long yellow braid that hung down his powerful naked back.
Brak localized the cry as coming from a slate bluff to his right. The base of the bluff was concealed by the massive boulders between which he scrambled now. He neared the last rock rampart, pulled up short.
The scream broke out a third time, desperate, wailing, Brak saw no paths open between these rocks. He slammed the broadsword back into its sheath, leaped high.
His powerful fingers found holds on the tallest stone. He went scrambling over with a lithe, animal agility. At the rock's top he shielded his eyes a moment, a giant figure, wide-shouldered and naked save for that lion's hide with its long tail.
For an instant the barbarian wondered whether he'd stumbled upon more witchery.
No woman was in sight near the cliff base. Instead he saw a pillar of rock, bluish-colored, shot through with flecks of a sparkling mineral. The pillar was twice his height. Winds and weathers old as time had fluted and sculptured it into a peculiar shape—wide at the bottom, then narrowing until it flared again at the top.
Upon this pillar, cross-legged, veined arms folded over his spindly chest, sat an old man.
A coarse gray robe, tattered and faded, protected his emaciated chest and shanks. Little of his face showed. His skull, cheeks and chin were one continuous tangle of hoary growth.
The man's appearance tempted Brak to laughter. But two things kept him silent.
One was the object which the man wore on a thong around his neck. It was one of those odd stone crosses of the Nameless God, with horizontal and vertical arms of equal length. The other was the man's face.
The old man sat with head thrown backward. His eyes were pressed shut. His lips formed a white line. He swayed, as if possessed, as if in a trance.
As Brak clambered down the face of the rock he muttered to himself. "What kind of trick is this? Imitating a woman's cry to frighten travelers. Or perhaps attract them? That's it. Probably there are robbers lurking close, ready to pounce on—"
Again the scream, blown on the softly keening wind.
Brak gazed past the pillar of rock where the old man swayed back and forth, hugging himself, lost in dreams or mystic visions. Then he noticed an opening at the base of the cliff. It was half hidden behind another jumble of stones.
But Brak was sure the scream had issued from the mouth of that cave.
Brak passed the pillar in great, loping strides. He spied a shepherd's crook carved from wood, lying on the ground. If brigands were setting a snare for the unwary, they were doing so with strange equipment.
Sword hand ready, Brak took a step into the dark of the cave. An odor washed over him. Brak's mouth wrenched.
The smell was the stink of decay, a green-black stench of primeval slime rotting away. The odor drifted from the dark ahead.
He heard the whimpering of the woman, steady and forlorn. Then there was another sound—the frenzied howl of an animal. Yet no animal's noise had ever sounded so loud in Brak's ear before. It hurt his head and set his heart thumping.
There was one instant when Brak's instincts rebelled. They warned him to turn and flee from the narrow cave. There was a thunderous cracking ahead, then an echo of it. The earth beneath Brak's feet shook faintly.
What lived down below? What sent up those bleats of blood-hunger and rocked the mountain with its thrashing?
Now Brak's eyes had accustomed to the gloom, which was relieved only by the dim light from outside. Brak saw that the cave angled downward until it seemed to end not far ahead.
With one hand pressed against the damp wall and the other tight on the broadsword haft, Brak crept forward. The roaring came again. It seemed to rise from the blackness where the tunnel floor ended. A pit?
For several moments Brak had heard no sound from the woman in trouble. All at once, as he neared the pit's lip, another moan reached his ears. Quickly he bellied down, crawled to the edge, stared over.
Far below, two great scarlet spots shone.
Eyes? Eyes that huge? In the head of what kind of creature? Certainly no kind Brak had ever encountered before.
Closer at hand he saw the woman. More precisely, a girl only slightly younger than Brak himself. Lying near Brak was a crude woven sandal with a split thong. Whoever she was, the girl had tumbled from the pit edge down a short incline to a narrow shelf. There she clung, an indistinct figure visible mainly because of the whiteness of her tunic and her face.
She had not seen Brak. She was staring down into the cavern where the red eyes smoldered.
"Girl?" Brak called softly, so as not to startle her. "Girl, look up here! I think I can reach you."
Her face lifted. Brak heard a gasp, a rattle of stones as her bare foot slipped. Rocks cascaded off the narrow shelf. Long moments later they struck far down, with dull echoes.
The girl kept staring while the thing in the pit flicked its red eyes open and shut, open and shut. It bellowed. The earth vibrated when it moved. Brak's belly churned with fear. The dead, decayed smell boiled up from the pit's bottom.
"Hold out your hand," Brak called. "It's too far," the girl called. "I'm frightened of letting go."
"There's no other way. Hold with one hand, reach with the other."
The girl hesitated only a moment. Then she extended her right hand. Brak braced his mighty legs, stiffened his belly against the rim of the pit, thrust his right hand downward. The girl sobbed.
Their hands were a sword-hilt apart. "Stretch on your toes!" Brak groaned with the effort of reaching. "A little higher—"
The girl fastened her left hand more tightly about the outcrop of rock she'd been gripping. Brak tightened the muscles of his legs until they ached, forcing himself forward another fraction, until the whole of his torso hung over into the blackness. Only the strength of his legs and the grip of his left hand around a rock imbedded in the tunnel floor kept him from falling. His long yellow braid hung down past his sweaty cheek, tickling it maddeningly.
The ghastly red eyes, huge as midsummer moons, had opened again. They watched, watched from the black where the stench drifted. Out of the pit blew more than a smell. Out of the pit came some nameless, ancient evil palpable as a cloud.
Brak's face twisted as the gap between hands closed. Sharp rocks poked his belly, his thighs, little shafts of pain. His shoulders ached. Groping upward for his hand, the girl lost her balance.
She cried out. She started to fall. Brak thrust his whole body forward and caught her fingers.
Weight wrenched Brak's arm. "Hold fast," he breathed, "Hold fast a moment more—" For he had her now, had his fingers around her fragile wrist. What remained was the task of pulling her upward. He prayed for the strength to do it.
The girl dangled in space above the shelf. Brak knew he was hurting her. Slowly he began to tighten the muscles of his arm and lift her by sheer force.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Witch of the Four Winds ? When the Idols Walked by John Jakes. Copyright © 1978 Exeter Limited Partnership. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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