Short Fiction - Poul Anderson (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📗

like drowned corpses. Looking behind, Corun could barely make out the frightened faces of the Umlotuans, huddled close together and gripping their weapons with futile strength.

The Xanthi glided noiselessly through the mumbling gloom, tall spectral forms with faint golden light streaming from their damp scales. It seemed as if there were other presences in the castle too, things flitting just beyond sight, hiding in lightless corners and fluttering between the streamers of fog. Always, it seemed, there were watching eyes, watching and waiting in the dark.

They came into a cavernous antechamber whose walls were lost in the dripping twilight. Tsathu’s voice boomed hollowly between the chill immensities of it: “Follow those who will show you to your quarters.”

Silent Xanthi slipped between the human ranks, herding them with spears⁠—the sailors one way, their chiefs another. “Where are you taking the men?” asked Imazu with an anger sharpened by fear. “Where are you keeping them?” The echoes flew from wall to wall, jeering him⁠—keeping them, keeping them, them, them⁠—

“They go below the castle,” said a Xanthian. “You will have more suitable rooms.”

Our men down in the old dungeons⁠—Corun’s hand whitened on the hilt of his sword. But it was useless to protest, unless they wanted to start a battle now.

The four human leaders were taken down another whispering, echoing tunnel of a corridor, up a long ramp that seemed to wind inside one of the towers, and into a circular room in whose walls were six doors. There the guards left them, fading back down the impenetrable night of the ramp.

The rooms were furnished with grotesque ornateness⁠—huge hideously carved beds and tables, scaled tapestries and rugs, shells and jewels set in the mold-covered walls. Narrow slits of windows opened on the wet night. Darkness and mist hid Corun’s view of the ground, but the faintness of the surf told them they must be dizzyingly high up.

“Ill is this,” he said. “A few guards on that ramp can bottle us up here forever. And they need only lock the dungeon gates to have our men imprisoned below.”

“We will treat with them. Before long they will be our allies,” said Shorzon. His hooded eyes were on Chryseis. It was with a sudden shock that Corun remembered. Days and nights of bliss, and then the violence of battle and the tension of approach, had driven from his mind the fact that he had never been told what the witch-pair was really here for. It was their voyage, not his, and what real good could have brought them to this place of evil?

He shoved his big body forward, a tawny giant in the foggy chill of the central room. “It is near time I was told something of what you intend,” he said. “I have guided you and taught you and battled at your side, and I’ll not be kept blindfolded any longer.”

“You will be told what I tell you⁠—no more,” said Shorzon haughtily. “You have me to thank for your miserable life⁠—let that be enough.”

“You can thank me that you’re not being eaten by fish at the bottom of the sea right now,” snapped Corun. “By Breannach Brannor, I’ve had enough of this!”

He stood with his back against the wall, sweeping them with ice-blue eyes. Shorzon stood black and ominous, wrath in the smoldering, sunken eyes. Chryseis shrank back a little from both of them, but Perias the erinye growled and flattened his belly to the floor and stared greenly at Corun. Imazu shifted from foot to foot, his wide blue face twisted with indecision.

“I can strike you dead where you stand,” warned Shorzon. “I can become a monster that will rip you to rags.”

“Try it!” snarled Corun. “Just try it!”

Chryseis slipped between them and the huge dark eyes were bright with tears. “Are we not in enough danger now, four humans against a land of walking beasts, without falling at each other’s throats? I think it is the witchcraft of Tsathu working on us, dividing us⁠—fight him!”

She swayed against the Conahurian. “Corun,” she breathed. “Corun, my dearest of all⁠—you shall know, you shall be told everything as soon as we dare. But don’t you see⁠—you haven’t the skill to protect yourself and your knowledge against the Xanthian magic?”

Or against your magic, beloved.

She laughed softly and drew him after her, into one of the rooms. “Come, Corun. We are all weary now, it is time to rest. Come, my dear. Tomorrow⁠—”

VII

Day crept past in a blindness of rain. Twice Xanthians brought them food, and once Corun and Imazu ventured down the ramp to find their way barred by spear-bearing reptiles. For the rest they were alone.

It ate at the nerves like an acid. Shorzon sat stiff, unmoving on a couch, eyes clouded with thought; his gaunt body could have been that of a Khemrian mummy. Imazu squatted unhappily, carving one of the intricate trinkets with whose making sailors pass dreamy hours. Corun paced like a caged beast, throttled rage mounting in him. Even Perias grew restless and took to padding up and down the antechamber, passing Corun on the way. The man could not help a half smile. He was growing almost fond of the erinye and his honest malevolence, after the intriguing of humans and Xanthi.

Only Chryseis remained calm. She lay curled on her bed like a big beautiful animal, the long silken hair tumbling darkly past her shoulders, a veiled smile on her red lips. And so the day wore on.

It was toward evening that they heard slow footfalls and looked out to see a party of Xanthi coming up the ramp. It was an awesome sight, the huge golden forms moving with deliberation and pride under the shimmering robes that flowed about them. Some were warriors, with saw-edged pikes flashing in their hands, but the one who spoke was plainly a palace official.

“Greeting from Tsathu, king of the Demon Sea, to Shorzon of Achaera,” the voice boomed. “You are to feast with the lords of the Xanthi tonight.”

“I