The Temple of Vitus Page 3

  The night was old. Many had retired to their huts and a young maid, beguiling to one’s sight with doe eyes and buxom figure, was pushed toward Risgan as an offering for his leisure. Her bare-skinned legs glistened with a golden sheen under the flickering firelight; her long narrow face showed an expression of alert intelligence rather than submissive fear or the bleak surprise of a coerced maid.

  Risgan arched back in good humour. He was relaxed by the brew. Not wishing to upset or even offend the forest people, and taken to languor, he went on to enjoy several leisurely hours in the comfort of the private tent aside the chief’s.

  He emerged hours later in a state of lordly ease, admiring the moonlight while he relieved himself. Needless to say, he returned to his woven-reed bed, where he slept in docile comfort as he had never before.

  * * *

  Come morn, the chief and others gave Risgan gifts of furs and a small dugout to replace his deteriorating raft; also, a large black and red octagonal charm, mounted on a blue runestone, which the chief personally hung on a feathered chain about the adventurer’s neck.

  Risgan, touched by the act, blinked warm gladness and gave them all the two small clear-silver beads that he still had in his collection—items once worn by a faraway, long-dead princess, so he claimed. He entrusted the raft to the village seniors who consigned it as an amusing toy to the younger members of the tribe. Boys and girls of indeterminate age dragged it out in enthusiasm to a place far out in the river to be the object of their war games, whistling and hooting. Several reined in on dugouts and pelted mud and rocks at it from their small craft.

  “They are a rambunctious lot,” chuckled Nalsi. “Steer clear of the far shores, Risgan, and you will avoid the bloodthirstiest gibbeths,” he advised solemnly.

  “I shall.”

  The relic hunter turned to leave but observed there was a furor in the glade in the vicinity of the chief’s hut. Such disturbances could only portend bad tidings. He frowned. Xoltux came charging out with a livid sneer on his face and mouthing words in a tongue that Risgan could only understand as anger. It was obvious that grave news of Risgan’s deeds touched the kinsmen. Risgan hurried his untying of the craft. Several of Xoltux’s staunchest supporters surrounded the chief, like guards.

  Risgan made efforts to steer his dugout out past the reeds, but he was not far out on the river, when shouts and beseeches drifted to his ears. Xoltux had accused the outlander of being a magician, and that the shaman had personally witnessed him manipulating an evil stone upon Varwa the chief’s consort, and now she was young again. “It’s witchcraft. I saw him, brother! Your wife is cursed too. She has bypassed the natural course of her life! When she should have passed to Dayagubuf, the compassionate spirit, she has now gone on to defy destiny!”

  Nalsi was confused and thunderstruck.

  The spirit-chaser rallied his supporters; he pointed two fingers out on the river, saying that the detestable foreigner had poisoned them all and their way of life. “He has averted the laws of nature! We must capture this evil doer and the poisoned thing in his pouch, which we will bury. He along with it.”

  Nalsi was overwhelmed by the news and Risgan gritted his teeth. Silent rage gripped him. He was convinced that the fanatic shaman only hungered for the relic himself—to use it for his own depraved ends.

  There was a fierce debate amongst the tribesmen over what action to take. A strange clicking dialect filled the communal glade—ominous possibilities followed.

  Risgan cursed the complication. The spirit-chaser was an evil plague, and the retriever paddled with fury. The elderly matron had clutched the relic for too long, he knew. Even from this vantage he could see her being led by the elbow by a handsome young man, Valfri, her son, looking no older than herself. Risgan gaped, He could not help but wonder anew at the magic of the youth talisman. The relic was cursed, even when it was promptly used for good purpose.

  The adventurer withdrew the bauble and with cautious trembling hands, wished to fling it far into the depths of the river. But he stayed his hand. The feeling alarmed him. Almost as from a dream, he felt the gem beckoning him, drawing him closer, as if whispering its need for other purposes—which were beyond his knowledge.

  The chief, flustered by all this uproar, stood stunned for several moments. He was nonetheless ecstatic at the sight of his healthy wife, now so radiant and youthful that he ran to embrace her, showering her with kisses. Disbelief shone in his eyes. Looking back at the stern shaman, the chief seemed torn. Between loyalty for his brother and gratitude for the outlander who had miraculously healed his beloved.

  Xoltux grinned; he and his own followers did not need the chief for their purposes. They rallied together and pursued Risgan in their dugouts. The shaman was at their head. The swish of projectiles whizzed past Risgan’s head and closed in the dark water cut by the hull.

  Risgan ducked low; he could feel the thud of projectiles rocking the gunnels in alarming frequency. Sharp obsidian tips pricked through the weave of his heavy cloak, some through the fine wicker-work of the dugout. Poison darts! Bridling with anger, Risgan gathered his courage. He rowed like a madman till his arms were near spent. The effort was in vain—the shaman’s dugouts were sleeker and pulled by stronger arms than his. The flotilla bore down on him without remorse. Providence was on its way for the chief had mustered his own force which flew out on their boats, at least equalling Xoltux’s.

  Risgan gave a snarl of satisfaction. Out in the wide bay of sparkling jade waters, there ensued a furious battle, each craft dragged along in the lee of the Vlon’s current. The shaman’s flotilla was forced to turn hither and face the new resistance.

  Poison darts flew like hail stones. They thudded into naked breasts; boats banged together, ramming enemy craft and shrieks fled across the bay, rocking the wide river. The whack of clubs on bone and the jabbing of spears and men jumping from boat to boat poisoned the air. Risgan flinched in horror. He hung his head low, hating what he witnessed.

  Gratefully, he looked back to witness the full deadlock and a space of diminishing violence. He paddled stealthily closer to the shore, moving downriver in the fierce current. A half mile later he beached his craft in a nest of mandrake roots. He struck out on foot, hoping to avoid detection from the water, also later to regain his craft when the furor had died down. He thought long and hard, caring little for the cuts and scrapes he accumulated as he swept into the dark trees.

  The shaman had steered away in disgust, avoiding the inconvenient dragnet. Now he was little interested in the battle with Nalsi and was more concerned with Risgan. Following the relic hunter with stealthy proficiency downriver, he saw the beached, half hidden dugout and gave a mirthless sneer.

  Gasping for breath, Risgan looked around the clot of trees with anxious intent. He sensed the pursuit of an enemy who knew the forests better than he. What to do? Keep running?

  Another foe was afoot. Perhaps an ulsimar or gibbeth? The relic hunter shuddered. He might escape his predators, if he did the unexpected thing… which entailed plunging deeper into the forest… The enemy of the dismal wood might be his saviour.

  Risgan may have underestimated his enemy. Xoltux, for the shaman he was, seemed to be a ghost himself, plodding along the loam with half the effort, knowing all the secret ways of the forest. Risgan made good progress, hacking stealthily with his knife through vine trailers and spidery knots of mandrakes, though he felt the eyes of predators on his back. He skirted a few unnerving bubbling mud pools, which he thought to be quicksand. These traps had an evil cast to them and he thought to sense a large shuffling shape following his heels several bowshots back but when he stopped and peered, the menace was gone—or was either so still as to meld with the eerie forest. Risgan shuddered in doubt; he proceeded with utmost caution.

  There was much Risgan saw in this land that was beguiling and terrifying: red-belled flowers whose mouths seemed to pine for flying insects; long cornflower stalks which swayed to the gentle movement of passing fe
et and an eerie cognizance; twice, he stared aghast as yellow, barbed vines dipped down from branches and attempted to coil about him. He slashed out with his knife and blundered on like a drunkard, half stumbling in consternation, dangerously close to another noxious mud pool.

  Risgan halted, bereft of breath, almost abreast an impenetrable wall of mangor cedar. The shaman had thrown his voice, unknown to his knowledge and a vicious growl came bounding from the brush.

  Risgan fell back springing in dismay. The threat of gibbeths this far north loomed foremost in his mind. He clambered in a different direction, wherein came yet another roar of immeasurable savagery.

  Two gibbeths? Risgan stood stock still. He bolted in an opposite direction. Stumbling about in confusion, he forged his way between two mossy stumps. He halted again, looking frantically from side to side. He seemed sandwiched between alternating sounds of menace. Risgan’s head spun. Oblivious to the shaman’s ventriloquist ability, Risgan discovered himself now wedged before a wall of rippling green spider vine and a long garden of bubbling quicksand. He turned in dismay, feeling defeat heavy at his heels. He tried to back out, heel his way to safety—but no! his luck had run out… There was nowhere else to go.

  The shaman approached on quiet feet. He stroked his magic stave, an impressive talisman, which glinted eerily in the dim afternoon light.

  “Well, a convenient catch,” he gloated. “We have with us a leghorn, green to the ways of the Ferna.”

  Risgan feigned defeat; he did well to let his shoulders sag. “You are wise and crafty, Xoltux. It seems as if you have me at a disadvantage; well, what is it you want? My death or the stone?”

  “Why not both? Your body, conveniently undiscovered, would not be wont to tell tales; withal, the stone would provide my enterprise with another curio to keep the weak, artless fools of Nalsi’s in thrall of my ambitions. One can never have enough talismans, I say,” he chuckled.

  “’Tis nothing more than I suspected,” growled Risgan. “The tribespeople are cattle to you. The healing of the matron, the wellbeing of your brothers, all a sweet charade. You care only for your own interests.”

  “You make it sound so sordid!” Xoltux cackled. “’Tis only business, you know.”

  “Business, business, ’tis always about business. And the grief of the world for it.”

  “You are wise enough to voice it, but stupid enough to venture into this neck of the woods.”

  Risgan made a sad sound. “I thought to have lost my way, indeed. As too you and my enemies back on the river, whom I thought were engulfed in Nalsi’s web.”

  “Bah! Those fools couldn’t hit the broadside of a boulder.”

  Risgan hoped to keep the spirit-chaser talking. For he sensed that another menace was prowling nearby—a sacred owl or some brand of eerie fowl, perhaps even an ulsimar that might have snaked its way close to the sounds of voices. Feeling the prowling marauder skulking and pacing, Risgan knew that any threshold of escape might have already passed. The shaman had cornered him; now Xoltux waved his wretched magic stave in his direction.

  Risgan recoiled as a strand of creeper vine edged down and caressed his shoulder with a sense of eeriness. Xoltux gave an explosive snigger, seeing the look of petrified horror on the relic hunter’s face. “You can heal the dying, make them young again, but yet you are afraid of a few straggles of spider vine? Hah! Are you a weakling then? Here, what about this?” He flourished the stave and the vines seemed to recoil. The weapon, a fetish new to Risgan’s eye, was a thing of elephant bone mantled with the skull of a basilmurk. The stave was much like Risgan’s lost truncheon, minus the skull.

  “Watch!” the shaman called. “The vines are barbed and deadly, to the novice. But to me?” He thrashed a sinister loop of punishment with the weapon; the living tendrils gave way to greater breadth with little shrieks and hisses.

  “Here, vermin, feel the wrath of Xoltux!” he gloated.

  Risgan leaped back with a grimace. He tried to follow the small path that was slowly arching shut in the trees, but too late. More tendrils had closed over the ivy in defence. It seemed as if the walls of vine were alive, like insects.

  “Now—give me the jewel,” croaked Xoltux icily.

  Risgan hesitated. The shaman’s eyes gleamed with a malignant fury. Visions of power swam in his zealot’s orbs. A discord stewed there—of power and ambition, warring with fear, and the neediness for complete adoration of his peers.

  Risgan seeing the burning fervour in those eyes, reached in his pouch. He saw no profit in keeping the bauble in his possession and he tossed the charm to the ground, unafraid of the consequences.

  “Very good,” said Xoltux, nodding. “Now explain how it works.” He prodded the relic with his stave, fearful to touch the thing himself.

  “One side offers youth, the other, death.”

  “That’s too ambiguous. Which one?” the shaman shrieked. “Which one offers death?”

  Now it was Risgan’s turn to bare his teeth with peevish anger. “Why should I tell you? You’re a loathsome snake, an opportunist, a backbiter and a blackguard. You’ll only use it for depraved ends.”

  The shaman gave an uproarious caw. “And who are you to pretend to use the magic for pure and altruistic means? Some healing avatar?” He snorted. “I’ll tell you why you will give me the information, Outlander. Because if you don’t…” He rapped his formidable staff on the turf. Tumultuous sounds entered the glade, like whining hornets or locusts. “Tell me now! Or do you wish to suffer extreme repercussions?”

  Risgan returned a lackadaisical smile.

  “Then die,” sighed the shaman. He swung the stave in an arrogant loop calculated to inflict maximum pain upon Risgan.

  The relic hunter backed away. He peered left and right. Dismay flooded his heart. A terrible roar had pierced the stillness. Now the long patch of quicksand which had blocked the way, gurgled and glooped in a terrible fury. In fact, a large gibbeth had made a sudden leap, attracted by the angry shouts, but had miscalculated and tumbled into the mire. Now the creature was struggling for its life in a suction of unrelenting forces. The shaman laughed. The ugly head was only a turquoise-matted thatch visible above the straining muck.

  “You thought to gull me into carelessness, did you, Outlander? What, and fall prey to this foolhardy gibbeth? Ha! I am too quick for that.” He croaked. “I’ve known it’s been stalking us for a while now. Nevertheless, a brave sally on your part, considering the creature could have as easily devoured you as me.”

  Risgan crouched and reached out a trembling hand for the relic. The shaman did not interfere; the bauble lay shining in sinister view at his feet in the limp grass.

  Xoltux ogled the coruscations on its edges with hungry anticipation. He screeched orders at Risgan to relinquish its mysteries. It was then that another creature struck without warning.

  The youth talisman went flying, rolling under the thunder of powerful, webbed feet.

  The kodo, a creature more comfortable on four legs than two, stood staring at Xoltux with large saucer-shaped eyes burning. The creature was some gruesome breed of hairless ape, peculiar to the semi-tropical forests. Its stiff quills like a porcupine’s radiated from scalp to shoulders. The creature boasted a baboon’s crouch, large powerful limbs and a flexible tongue that shot out twenty yards, as it did now, to curl around the shaman’s waist, with just enough coiling gummy loops of strangling strength to prompt from the zealot a frightful gasp.

  Xoltux seemed struck senseless. But he was not completely powerless. He had managed to blurt out a fragment of a spell and rap his stave twice on the turf before he was completely enveloped.

  The kodo was pitched sideways in the magic’s wrath. A freak tug of wind, or some malevolent waft, forced the creature slipping into the mud, dragging the shaman with it, who was wrapped in its filthy tongue.

  Risgan did not linger to witness the grisly scene. There were sick howls of madness and flurries of thrashing that offended his ears.

&n
bsp; He snatched up the talisman and fled without a moment’s thought. He crashed through the vines, squeezing past sap-oozing trunks. Over a huge rotten stump he staggered and mossy stones. Never had he run so fast. Where there was one kodo there would be another, so Risgan justified his unseemly flight. There was some ghoulish quirk of justice here—Xoltux falling to the kodo, though the retriever did not care to analyze it. No more did he think of the shaman, only he pondered his own escape and the undeniable fact that the relic was cursed. An enigmatic bonding had linked him and the gem together, and it seemed he was destined to carry it…

  2: The Mantaray coast

  Risgan did not realize how close he was to the estuary of the river Vlon and the sea. The water glinted through the trees and he came out of the wilds a haunted man, bedevilled by gibbeths, usilmars, basilmurks, wet worms, leeches, wire snakes and other such creatures.

  At his wits’ end he had one murky night clawed his way up a giant mandrake tree to elude the coiling tongue of a kodo—long ago he had lost his famous purple powder renowned for deterring gibbeths, though he doubted if such preventative would actually gain any protection against a kodo. No sooner had he escaped the creature than he was set upon by several large grey flapping things—perhaps Nalsi’s legendary stone owls. Shouts and frantic knife hacks had repelled the brood at last, though gnashing beaks and talons had ripped his clothing and drawn blood.

  The trees finally broke, and the river, to his left, became a wide sluggish bay, almost a lake. Vaster than vast, the sea still ranged east and west, but of colour much more muted aquamarine. He prayed to Douran that shelter would find him here, for he was spent.