Part 21 (2/2)

”Cabal went to where the water flowed into the room, took some in his cupped hand, and tasted it. 'If you still have a thirst, Enright, you can slake it here. The water's good.' He walked around the pool to the other gutter and, taking the tube of holy water from his pocket, allowed a drop to fall from it into the runoff. There was a brief flash of blue fire as the two liquids mingled. He nodded, clearly pleased that the experiment had performed as expected. 'And this is the source of that remarkable stream. Now, I wonder what it is,' he said, going to one knee by the pool, 'that lies in here and has been supernaturally corrupting spring water by the tun for seven centuries.' I didn't like the calculating way he said it, and I was glad to find something to distract him.

”'Cabal! Look!' In the torchlight, I had made out more of the carvings, this time plainly written. He was with me in a moment.

”'This one looks quite simple. No triple imperatives, no flowery discursions, just Thou who hast entered here, know thy folly. For the sake of thine soul and the sanct.i.ty of life upon life, leave now. This is the tomb of ... ' It was hard to tell beneath the unsteady light of the torch, the unshaven, chin, the dirt of the woods, and his own sallow complexion, yet I had the distinct impression that Cabal paled. 'Umtak Ktharl,' he said finally, in a ghastly thin voice.

”'What did you say?' I demanded.

”My voice seemed to shake him out of the state of mental paralysis he'd retreated into and he turned to me with a new, urgent vitality. 'I said,' he said, s.n.a.t.c.hing the torch from my hand and heading for the entrance, 'we're leaving. Now!'

”Remonstrations were pointless as he gained the exit and moved out of sight. Cursing my impetuous companion, I went after him.

”I caught up with him at the corner of the pa.s.sage and the main cave, where he was glaring at the bandits from concealment, apparently trying to will them into nonexistence. 'Who's Umtak Ktharl?' I whispered urgently.

”'That doesn't matter,' he whispered back. 'We should be concerning ourselves with how to escape.'

”'No, it does matter. Why are you so scared?'

”He glared at me. 'I am not scared,' he barked, rather too loudly.

”The bandits all turned to look at us.

”Cabal looked at them, then looked back at me. 'Now look what you made me do,' he said, exasperatedly. Then he walked up to the nearest bandit as if we had every right to be there. 'Guten Abend,' he said. The bandit looked at him with sheer disbelief. 'We're so very sorry, but we've rather been forced into precipitate action. A thousand pardons.' So saying, he pulled the bandit's revolver from his belt and shot him through the head. He backed towards me, firing twice more, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a rifle that was lying at hand, and threw it to me. 'We'll just be holing up down here. Feel free to try and winkle us out.' He turned and ran back down the pa.s.sage, with me close at his heels. I swear there was a count of three before the bandits fully appreciated what had happened. Our unexpected appearance and Cabal's easy resort to great violence had quite discomforted them. Then the bullets started flying.

”'Now what?' I asked him as we sought cover in the tomb cave.

”'I'm no military man, thankfully,' replied Cabal as he laid himself flat behind a partially emergent boulder, 'but, in their place, there are two obvious plans. The better of the two is simply to ascertain that there is no exit from here and then seal us in. In a couple of weeks, they can wander in with complete impunity.'

”'And the second?' Although I was sure I already knew.

”'The second is purest folly. A frontal a.s.sault. Here they come!'

”The villains, unappreciative that everything comes to him who waits, had ma.s.sed on the other side of the entrance and were running in, zigzagging across the floor in an attempt to reach cover. Cabal fired and missed the first through. I took a little more time, in the poor light of a few torches that had been thrown in, and put a bullet in the wretch's chest. Cabal fired once more at the entrance, and then I heard his revolver clack uselessly. He snapped the cylinder out and studied the chambers. 'A cautious man. He didn't carry a live round under the hammer. Five shots. I'm out.' He closed up the pistol resignedly and dropped it to the floor. 'Make your shots count better than I did mine, Enright.'

”A couple of the bandits had reached cover and were firing over our heads, probably trying for a lucky ricochet. They stood an excellent chance of getting one, too, given the confines we found ourselves in. Happily, ammunition became a concern and they slowed to some desultory sniping. I lay there behind that boulder knowing what it was to really be between a rock and a hard place. My rifle's magazine held only another four rounds and there had to be at least eight bandits left. Our death was a certainty, and the only choice left to us was how easy we made it for them. I'd made up my mind to make it as difficult as possible, and I suspected that Cabal was of the same liver. After a few minutes, the ringing in my ears from the close gunfire had subsided to the point that I could hear the surviving bandits arguing amongst themselves. 'What now?' I asked Cabal again, with less urgency this time. There hardly seemed much point.

”He sighed, picked up the useless revolver, and fidgeted with it as he replied. 'We wait while the better option occurs to them and they wall us in, I suppose.'

”'That's not very optimistic.'

”He laughed humourlessly. 'I don't see many grounds for optimism.' He looked past the edge of his boulder at the pool. 'You wanted to know who Umtak Ktharl was.'

”'If we're to die in his tomb, I might as well know who I'm going to be sharing eternity with.'

”Cabal nodded. 'That's fair. Very well. Every schoolboy knows of the Great Ha.s.s Majien and his Ugol hordes. The stories talk of vast hordes of hors.e.m.e.n sweeping down from the Irthat Steppes with Majien at their head in his ubiquitous war chariot. Nothing could stand before their unparalleled ferocity, expert horsemans.h.i.+p, uncanny archery, little ponies, comedic moustaches, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam. Utter rot. I researched this period in some detail and I'm confident that the horde barely exceeded a thousand undisciplined men. Any defending army worth the name would have wiped the floor with them.'

”'You're saying the history books are wrong?'

”'I'm saying the history books have rationalised how a bunch of foul-smelling thugs managed to defeat every force thrown against them. The truth is too ugly for the historians in their ivory towers, so they've come up with the myth of an unbeatable army. The Ugol were unbeatable, but that's the only true part of it.'

”'They had a secret weapon?' I ventured.

”'No. Yes, actually. Yes, in a sense, they did. A secret weapon. Umtak Ktharl. He was the Great Ha.s.s's vizier, adviser, majordomo. Actually, I think he ran everything and the Ha.s.s was just there as a more acceptable figurehead. The Ha.s.s could roister and doister and do all that nonsense. Umtak Ktharl, on the other hand, was evil incarnate.' I looked questioningly at him, but he was disa.s.sembling the revolver for his amus.e.m.e.nt and wasn't aware of me. 'I first became aware of him when I read of something called the Red Snow,' Cabal continued. 'Red snow that fell from a clear sky, and where it touched human flesh it dissolved it. And every flake sighed as it ate away the meat from a man's bones, the sigh of a tiny ribbon of vital essence leaking away into thin air. Entire armies were reduced by it, kings lived in fear of it, and it was only one of the novelties in Umtak Ktharl's bag of tricks. Some were much, much worse. Who would stand against an army backed by a warlock like that?'

”'A necromancer,' I corrected.

”He seemed to be about to lose his temper, and took a moment to swallow his irritation. I affected not to notice.

”'No,' he said finally, and his voice betrayed no emotion. 'Not a necromancer. They are men of a very different stripe. This warlock was the reason for the horde's success. The only reason. Kingdoms would be abandoned at the very whisper that the Great Ha.s.s and his eminence grise were coming. If Umtak Ktharl was entombed here, it explains why the horde withdrew soon after they pa.s.sed through this land. They very wisely appreciated that the jig was up and it was time to cut and run.'

”'Not a pretty story.'

”'No.'

”'There's still something about this place that I don't understand. Why the pool, the spring?'

”Cabal looked at me again and smiled that ugly, cold smile of his once more. 'Isn't it obvious?' He looked over at the pool and made as if to speak. Then his expression suddenly became horrified. 'Enright! What's that by the gutter? Over there, man!'

”I followed his glance. Near the gutter that fed spring water into the pool, there was something dark and ophidian. As I watched, it moved slowly and cautiously towards the running water. I blinked and then appreciated the illusion. The tail of the black snake ran back towards the body of the bandit I had shot-the flattened perspective, of course, it was obvious. 'It's blood, Cabal. Only blood.'

”The effect on Cabal was astounding. He sat up, presenting himself as a beautiful target, and started yabbering at the bandits in furious German, pointing frantically at the dead man. Fortunately for him, my reactions were better than those of our persecutors. I dived across between cover and tackled Cabal, flattening him behind his boulder even as a shot whizzed through the s.p.a.ce he'd occupied a moment before. I hadn't been expecting grat.i.tude, but I was unprepared for the vitriol Cabal blazed at me. Not much of it was in English, or even German, but what little I could make out doesn't bear repeating.

”'I just saved your life, Cabal!' I bellowed in his face. 'They would have had you otherwise!'

”'Them?' he barked back. 'I'm not afraid of them. The worst they can do is kill us!'

”Suddenly, I became aware of a bubbling sound, like a great cauldron coming to the boil. Risking a peek by the boulder, I was astounded to see that the water in the pool was boiling. Beside me, Cabal said with sharp anger and desperation, 'Blood! It's too late, there's blood in the water!' And so there was; the slow trickle of blood from the bandit's body had finally reached the gutter and thence the pool.

”I was never very bright at school in my divinity cla.s.ses. Our teacher, Doctor Chatt, was a patient man, but even he must have been sorely tried by my complete inability to absorb anything at all. Or at least I'd always believed none of it had stuck until, looking at that extraordinary pool, its surface boiling fiercely and seeming to glow with subdued red, like the sea over a submarine volcano, I heard dear old Chatt's voice speak to me over the distance of years. It was a lesson about John the Baptist, and somebody had asked what baptism meant. 'It is the was.h.i.+ng away of our sins,' Chatt had replied in that dark, wooden voice of his. The was.h.i.+ng away of our sins. And then I understood.

”Umtak Ktharl had been having his sins washed away for seven centuries. Seven hundred years of pure water driving over him as he lay at the bottom of that strange pool, seven hundred years of corruption being sapped from him. And he, a seemingly bottomless well of sin, hadn't been purified one wit. In an instant, I saw it all. The Great Ha.s.s finally realising that his vizier's goals surpa.s.sed those of any mortal man; the secret construction of this place; the luring of Umtak Ktharl here under some pretext and then plunging him into the pool before he recognised the trap. As generations had been born, flourished, and died away, Umtak Ktharl had lain here, rendered powerless by the never-ending purity of a mountain stream, powerless but still rotten to the core of his foul soul.

”At least, the purification had been never-ending. Until the blood of a wicked man had spilt into it and it had been polluted.

”As I watched the boiling increase in intensity, Cabal slumped down behind the boulder and commented, rather flippantly, I thought, 'Oh, well. There's the end of the world as we know it.'

”'Is there nothing we can do?' I started to ask him, but he hushed me with a raised finger.

”'I'm thinking,' he said. And, as he thought, Umtak Ktharl rose from the waters.

”He seemed to half climb, half float from the pool, an Oriental who should-judging merely by the elements of his face-have been in his forties. But there was something wrong in the way they worked together, perhaps caused by the uncertain light or my own state of mind, something that made him seem ancient beyond belief. The water streamed from his high brow as mercury across gla.s.s, and fell hissing like drops of lava to the rocky floor. He was dressed in a long heavy robe of the type favoured by the Ugol in centuries past, but it was dark and featureless, hanging about him like a bed of weed, dank and horrid. It had no right to have survived its long immersion, of course, but mere physics were of little consequence in that cave at that moment.

”All of which were mere details beside those eyes. I cannot even begin to describe them, for as soon as I saw him I looked away. But I know one thing of a certainty, and that is that they were not human. I knew nothing of this ... man's history and have never gone to pains to find out since, for I have no desire to learn what precisely takes a man's eyes and replaces them with the voids that I glimpsed. Perhaps his eyes were black orbs in his skull. I hope so, for the alternative was that he had no eyes at all but saw through sockets filled by something so wrong for this world that they were not simply beyond description but beyond apprehension.

”My sanity was saved by the bandits, who, seeing only the warlock's back, opened fire. Umtak Ktharl staggered very slightly under the rain of bullets, like a man snagging his toe in a loose carpet but catching himself in plenty of time. He seemed, if anything, faintly exasperated. Then he turned and set foot on dry ground for the first time in thirty-five generations. The instant they saw his face, the firing stopped. There was a moment of utter astonishment, and then one man made a horrible high, whining scream of terror and bolted.

”It was the signal for a general rout. The surviving bandits threw themselves back into the pa.s.sage, kicking and trampling those who were too slow. I saw Umtak Ktharl lazily wave his hand and the hindmost bandit burst into fire, an unnatural fire of grey flames that consumed him within seconds. Yet he continued to scream even as he fell into ashes and for some moments afterwards. His fate inspired his companions to yet greater exertions and, in a moment, they had gone. Their nemesis followed with insolent leisure. Cabal and I were left alone, listening to their dying screams echoing in the entrance cave.

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