Part 17 (1/2)

”Maybe another time.” The swordsman ventured a wan smile. ”My soul's all tied up just now.” He pointed to his companion. ”With him.”

”Pity.” Straightening, the demon smiled affably at Ehomba. ”I could split your sternum, tear out your heart, and leave you to bleed to death here in the sand.” He shuddered slightly. ”But I can tell that you'd spoil it all by resisting, and anyway it's too cold out this morning for sport. I've a ways to go before I dig a hole and make camp.”

”Since you are not going to kill us,” the herdsman replied good-naturedly, ”could you tell us how far it is to the nearest water hole?”

”Water hole?” The demon eyed him in disbelief, then burst out roaring. It was laughter wild and withering enough to scald bare skin. Indeed, unprotected by fur or learning, Ehomba had to turn away from it to keep himself from being scorched.

”There's no water holes in this country. Hot springs, yes, and boiling mud pots, and steaming alkali lakes a being can take a proper bath in-but water holes?” One crimson, clawed finger elongated enough to reach up and over the specter's skull, pointing to the northwest.

”Only one place you might find running water, and that's Skawpane. They got everything in Skawpane.

Another month or so and I'll be due for a visit there myself, depending on how well the prospecting goes.” From the vicinity of the occulted leather bag, small screams bereft of all hope seeped futilely.

Simna ibn Sind shuddered. The chill he felt had nothing whatsoever to do with the temperature, perceived or otherwise.

”What is this Skawpane?” Ehomba asked.

The demon sn.i.g.g.e.red at some private joke. ”Only decent place in the Blasted Lands. There's other flyspecks claim to be, but Skawpane's the only real town.” Oculi that reflected righteously h.e.l.lish origins stared into the herdsman's. ”Go there if you dare. If you seek water that's unboiled and nonpoisonous, that's the only place you might find it. I guarantee you one thing.” It nodded knowingly. ”You and your familiars will be a novelty. Don't get many mortals in Skawpane.”

With that, the apparition tipped its hat politely, set it neatly back over the protruding horns, and ambled off down a side gully. In its wake the stink of masticated sulfur and burning brimstone corrupted the air, and bootprints fused the sand where they had trod into dungy gla.s.s.

Smiling pallidly, Simna was quick to offer a suggestion. ”If we ration our remaining water carefully, we might well make it to the base of the mountains.”

Ehomba considered. ”That is what I wanted to believe. But I think now that I was allowing my common sense to be swept aside by optimism and hope. Hunkapa Aub in particular needs a lot of water.” He sighed. ”We must make our way to this Skawpane and refill our water bags there.”

The swordsman was reluctant to concede the point. ”How about we just let our common sense be swept, and hope that we find a spring as soon as we strike the foothills?”

Ehomba pursed his lips disapprovingly. ”You are more afraid of what we may encounter in this town than you are of dying of thirst?”

Simna jerked a thumb toward the gully where the prospecting demon had disappeared. ”If that thing was representative of the general citizenry of this particular metropolis, then my answer is yes.”

It did not matter. He was outvoted. Having followed Etjole Ehomba this far, neither Hunkapa Aub nor the black litah was about to dispute his judgment. That was because both of them were dumb animals, Simna knew, though he was loath to point it out. Grumbling, he hoisted his pack and water bags and followed along.

Maybe he was worrying needlessly, he told himself. Maybe the demon had been having a little fun at their expense. Skawpane might prove to be a quaint, if isolated, little oasis of a community, its dusty streets shaded by palm trees, its inhabitants serene and content with their lot. Believing this, wanting to believe it, he marched along beside his tall companion with a renewed feeling of confidence. Even if he was wrong and his hopes were to prove unrealized, how bad could it be? A town was a town, with all the familiar urban baggage that implied.

When they finally reached the munic.i.p.al outskirts, he saw that he was only partially correct. Skawpane was a community, all right.

But it was no oasis.

XVI.

”Do we have to go in there?” Simna stood atop the smooth-surfaced, rounded boulder of yellow-white sandstone looking across the flat, hardscrabble plain that separated the travelers from the first outlying structures.

Ehomba did not squint as he contemplated their imminent destination. He was used to the sun. ”Unless you want to chance running out of water before we reach the mountains. I have seen men who tried to reach the coast of Naumkib from the interior but ran out of water before they found a stream or village.

Even those who had not yet been located by scavengers were unpleasant to look upon.”

”A fine choice,” the swordsman grumbled. Resigned, he started down the gentle slope. ”Hoy, maybe they'll have cold beer.”

After a last, speculative glance, Ehomba followed and caught up to him. ”Do you really believe that?”

”No,” Simna confessed, ”but here lately I find that I prefer refres.h.i.+ng delusions to the reality of our actual surroundings.”

Skawpane turned out to be less appalling from a distance. From the disgusting state of the dirt streets that ran with dull green putrescence to the sewer grates designed to carry off flash floods of mucus, the act of merely walking quickly degenerated into a detestable activity. No edifice rose to a height of more than three stories, perhaps because of the lack of suitable building materials. Storefronts were fas.h.i.+oned of skin tanned to woody toughness by the repeated application of hot blood and salt water. The origin of these skins was a question the travelers by mutual unspoken consent decided not to ask.

Sidewalks rose a foot or more above the abominable streets. Instead of wooden slats, their planks were fas.h.i.+oned of split bones with the rounded side facing downward. Larger bones such as scapulae had been made into gleaming white shutters that flanked windows of thinly stretched corneas. Occasionally a poorly fas.h.i.+oned pane would blink desperately, reflecting its organic origin.

There were tall, narrow chimneys made of interlocking vertebrae, though what a home or shop would need with a chimney and fireplace in such a h.e.l.lish climate Ehomba could not imagine. Troughs of liquid sulfur stood outside several of the establishments. Standing patiently at their hitching rails and nuzzling the noxious, toxic brew they contained were a diversity of infernal steeds. The herdsman saw desiccated horses whose pointed ribs protruded from their sides and whose lower incisors pierced their upper jaws like the tusks of b.a.s.t.a.r.d babirusas. All had prominent, protuberant eyes that shone with the madness that resided within.

Nor were they the only mounts secured or occasionally spiked to the railings. One storefront they pa.s.sed had a pair of enormous, hirsute hogs roped to a trough at which they rooted ferociously. When these glanced up to espy the travelers, they strove hard to break their bonds. In so doing they exposed mouthfuls of long, sharp teeth that seemed to belong to some other animal. The saddles fastened to their backs were small and narrow, with disproportionately high pommels. What their riders looked like the visitors could only imagine.

Across the street three elephantine orange-green slugs lay melting in the sun. Their glutinous bodies renewed themselves as they liquefied and they emitted an odor so foul that it rose above all the other myriad stinks that afflicted the noisome concourse. In place of saddles they wore simple handgrips that were buried deep within the slimy flesh itself. Once more, their riders were thankfully conspicuous by their absence.

That did not mean that the streets were devoid of denizens. While Skawpane would never pa.s.s for a bustling metropolis, neither was it a ghost town-though ghosts shared the streets and fronting establishments with the rest of their fellow citizens. In addition to reddish demons who might have been related to the prospector they had encountered out in the layered hills, there were demonic folk of every stripe and color. Some were dressed in styles that would have been considered shocking in cities as far apart as Lybondai or Askaskos, but which in their current surroundings seemed perfectly appropriate.

Others were content with plainer attire.

The population was a melange of all that was disturbing and horrific, a veritable melting pot of the diabolical. Besides demons and ghosts there were less familiar phantasms, from towering, spindly brown creatures with bulging pop eyes to winged horrors boasting circular mouths that covered their entire black faces. The crows that haunted the tops of buildings and pecked at offal in the streets had membranous wings like bats, and sickly toothed beaks that looked fragile enough to crumble at a touch.

A flower-crowned, tentacled horror lazing in a rocking chair made of human bones tracked their progress down this boulevard of horrors with organs that were not eyes. Next to where its feet would have been if it had had feet, a dog-sized lump of multilegged one-eyed phlegm lifted its rostrum and sniveled threateningly.

Wherever they went and whatever they pa.s.sed, they attracted attention. Exactly as the prospector had predicted, the arrival of mortals in town was cause for comment. When a tubby yellow blob whose midsection was lined with gaping multiple mouths came b.u.mbling off the sidewalk toward them with self-evident mayhem on whatever it possessed for a mind and both Ehomba and Simna drew swords and proceeded to cut it to pieces, none of the fiendish onlookers voiced a warning or raised an objection. In fact, several evinced what appeared to be evidence of macabre amus.e.m.e.nt. A few interested horrors that had been considering partic.i.p.ating in the antic.i.p.ated butchery changed their minds at this exhibition of formidable resistance on the part of the visiting quartet.

”I need to stop and clean myself.” Repeatedly licking one forepaw, the black litah applied it to his eyes and snout. ”I don't think I've ever felt so filthy.”

”It is not the street here that makes one feel unclean.” Striding along, the always curious Ehomba tried to identify the composition of the slimed, slaglike substance beneath his sandals. ”It is the atmosphere.”

”Hunkapa no like,” declared the hairy ma.s.s that lumbered along in his wake.

”We agree on something.” Holding his sword like a long gray flag of warning, Simna put all the confidence and c.o.c.kiness he could muster into his stride. At the first sign of weakness here, he suspected, the four of them would go down beneath a horde of horrors, torn apart for a midday snack-and that was if they were lucky. It was vital to maintain an appearance of invincibility.

In this Ehomba was of no help. Ever since they had entered the town, the soft-voiced herdsman had altered nothing. His expression, his posture, the loose, casual manner in which he held his spear: all were unchanged. Whether this seeming indifference was perceived by the ghastly inhabitants of Skawpane as an invitation to feast or supreme confidence in powers they could not descry remained to be seen.

At least they were not immune to the effects of a well-honed blade, skillfully wielded, the swordsman reflected. He gripped his sword a little tighter.

”Hoy, bruther, where's the water you promised us?”

”Promised?” Ehomba glanced down at his friend. ”If you would put food in my mouth with as much ease as you do words, I would never grow hungry again.” Simna might think him detached, but his cool dark eyes missed nothing. ”We need to ask someone.”

”Don't you mean something?” The swordsman skipped agilely to one side as a crow soaring past overhead relieved itself. The dark red dropping sizzled where it struck the moist, mephitic street.

”I wonder why someone-or something-chose to put a town here, in the worst place imaginable?”

Ehomba mused as they walked on. The buildings were moving slightly apart as the street widened. They were coming to some kind of central square or plaza.

Simna's retort was tense and edgy. ”Maybe it's a summer resort, where the residents can come to escape the heat of their customary surroundings. Who knows what monstrosities like these consider attractive in the way of climate or countryside?”

”For one thing, we like it beautifully barren and dest.i.tute, visitor. To most of us this is splendid country.”