“Uh!—Sorry,” said Limnar. “Anyway, King Carter and I had that much in common—knowing you two, I mean. And for all that the voyage back to Ilek-Vad was a short one, well, we got to know each other fairly well.”
“Well enough for him to tell you what caused him to cut and run?” asked Hero.
“Hey!” said Eldin. “Whoa, boy! Randolph Carter’s no ordinary man. Why, he’s dreamed dreams you couldn’t even begin to imagine!”
“Eldin’s right,” Limnar nodded. “King Carter is a master dreamer. Be careful how you speak of him.”
“No offense,” Hero held up his hands. “I’ll rephrase it: why was he in such a hurry?”
“Two reasons. First, if the moon really is falling, there’s a device King Carter can use to save at least Ilek-Vad. The city’s master scientists and white mages long ago created a machine which, when it’s used, throws a near-impenetrable screen—like a great dome of invisible force—over the whole city. The machine was last used during the Bad Days, but King Carter has the power to bring it back into use. Thus he could perhaps save Ilek-Vad, even if the rest of the dreamlands were to be destroyed. That was his prime reason for returning home: to reactivate the great force dome. You see, his first loyalty is to Ilek-Vad.”
“What of his second loyalty?” Eldin grunted. “What was this other reason you mentioned?”
“Why, to serve the dreamlands as a whole, what else?”
Hero nodded. “And just how does he intend to do that?”
Limnar shrugged. “We didn’t get around to talking about that—not at any great depth—but you can be sure he has something up his sleeve. You have to remember, King Carter is one of a very few dreamers ever to visit the moon and return unharmed! No mean feat, that.”
“Aye,” Eldin nodded his agreement. “The one sure sign of a really powerful dreamer: to do what no man ever did before, to dream dreams beyond the mundane imagination.”
“Oh?” Hero raised an eyebrow. “I don’t find it so very difficult to imagine. I would gladly undertake just such a journey myself—for a good cause. Why, I’ve heard it whispered that the horned ones of Leng do the trip regularly in those vile black galleys of theirs!”
“Right!” Eldin nodded. “That’s how Carter got there, shanghaied aboard one of those double-damned ships of the horned ones. What’s remarkable, though, is in the way he returned.”
“Oh?” Hero still looked a trifle skeptical.
“Yes,” said Limnar, “for he returned—”
“Don’t tell him!” Eldin snarled.
“Eh?” said Limnar, astonished at the other’s outburst. “Why in the dreamlands not?”
Lowering his voice a little, Eldin turned just a shade pink as he answered: “Because he—he’ll scoff, that’s why. He’s like that, is Hero.”
“So don’t tell me,” Hero shrugged and pretended to pick at his fingernails. “Let’s face it, most of dreamland’s legends are a pack of damned lies anyway,” he deliberately goaded them. “Dreams and fancies, that’s all.”
“Dreams, yes,” Limnar Dass had stiffened a little, “for dreams are the essence of existence. Lies—no!”
“A strong dreamer may direct his own dreams, guide his own destiny,” Eldin growled. “Haven’t you learned that much, lad? Is there still so much of the waking world left over in you? I mean, if you don’t believe in dreams, then what the hell are you doing here in Earth’s dreamland?”
“All right, all right!” Hero snapped at last. “Give me a chance, can’t you? You said I would scoff. How do you know? Maybe I will believe! So just how did Randolph Carter get back from the moon to the dreamlands?”
“In a great leap of cats,” said Limnar before the Wanderer could stop him. “He was rescued by the cats of Ulthar, who leapt down with him from the moon. That’s one of the reasons why the felines have such special privileges in Ulthar. Like that old Tom there,” and he pointed to a huge sleek cat which lay curled on a blanket in the corner of the room. “He’s a temple cat, and that’s an honor which was probably bestowed upon him for just such a deed as—”
“Cats!” said Hero, who had seemed momentarily stupefied. “A leap of cats? … Oh, my!”
“Huh!” Eldin snorted. “I told you he’d scoff.”
“Now you have to admit—” Hero started, but paused and frowned when the temple cat sprang lithely atop the table and marched to a position central between the three where they sat. The great cat looked at Hero through half-shuttered eyes—disapprovingly, he thought.
“I’ve warned you to watch what you say,” Limnar grinned. “Why, it’s possible that this old boy is one of the very cats who rescued King Carter!”
While Limnar spoke, Eldin scratched the great cat behind its ears. In return the cat purred throbbingly and fondly arched its back against the Wanderer’s brawny arm. Hero stretched out a hand to do the same—and the animal hissed, struck with a heavy paw, left crimson dew welling on the back of Hero’s hand. Then even as he snatched back that wounded member, the cat was gone, leaping to the floor and walking haughtily out of the room with never a backward glance.
While Hero cursed, Eldin and Limnar laughed out loud and thumped the table; but in another moment one of the Captain’s crewmen entered the room to report Gnorri II’s air-readiness.
“We’ll be up immediately,” said Limnar, still chuckling a little, sending the man about his duties. Then the Captain turned back to his friends. “Well, gentlemen, shall we go?”
“What?” cried Eldin. “And what of the preliminaries? Why, we haven’t agreed to the quest yet. Damn me—we don’t even know what the quest is!—Or, what’s more to the point, what’s in it for us.”
“That’s all very true,” Hero agreed, peering at his scratches. “I mean, we didn’t get much out of our last little venture, did we? We are professional questers, after all. What about payment?”
“Ah, but you have accepted!” Limnar contradicted. “Just a few minutes ago. As for payment: didn’t you say you’d do it for a good cause?”
“What?” said Hero, beginning to feel a bit lost. “What’s that you say I said?”
“That you’d gladly journey to the moon,” Limnar reminded him, “for a good cause.”
“Now hold on there, Cap’n Dass—” Eldin blustered, but this time it was the sky-Captain’s turn to interrupt him:
“He said it, Eldin,” Limnar repeated, “and he may very well be held to it. Both of you, in fact, since it’s well known that you speak for each other. But that will have to be King Carter’s decision.”
“I said it, yes,” Hero began to protest, “but—”
“It was your boast,” Limnar reminded.
“But—” Hero and Eldin started together.
“But why not look at it on the bright side?” Limnar interrupted again. “I mean, you may not be required to go aquesting to the moon. I’m merely guessing, that’s all …”
After a moment’s silence, the Wanderer gave a derisive snort and headed for the door. There he paused, turned, bowed and inclined his head toward the corkscrew stairwell. “Well?” he growled. “The ship’s waiting. Shall we go?”
And as Limnar and Hero brushed past him he grated in the latter’s ear: “You and that damned mouth of yours!”
CHAPTER III
In the Mad Moon’s Glare
“What I find,” said Hero when they were under way, “is that I’m restless. And not just because I’ve been on the run lately. I mean, I can’t settle to anything. Not once the moon’s up. Not in the sick glare of the mad moon.”
“We’re all the same,” Limnar agreed. “There’s a fever loose in the dreamlands once the moon has risen. Men and beasts alike, we all feel it, a madness blown on the night winds—blown down from that bloated moon.”
Eldin shivered and said, “And we talk in whispers. Everyone talks in whispers, as if the blasted moon were listening! Me: I’m not used to it. I’ve roared in the faces of kings and lords, monsters, magicians and metal men—and yet
, beneath this made moon, even my voice is muted.”
“Hmm,” said Hero thoughtfully. “It seems there’s a bright side to everything!”
They stood on the smooth pine planking of the bridge and leant on the rail, gazing out over the nighted dreamlands where they lay below, all yellow and queasy in the near-liquid moonlight. And high overhead (and yet seeming so close that you might reach out a hand and touch it) the mad moon sailed in a sort of gloating glory through the sky, her mountains and craters clearly defined and etched with inky shadows.
“Even on this ship,” said Limnar under his breath, his whisper breaking what threatened to become a sort of hypnotic strangulation. “Look at the crew, all abustle—and half of them ought really to be in their hammocks by now. Do you feel the breeze? It feels damp, but if you put your hand up to your face it’s dry. What kind of moonlight is it that flows like dry slime?”
“Enough!” muttered Eldin with an involuntary shudder. “Let’s go inside Captain, and crack a bottle of your fine wine. My throat’s parched as a witch’s tit, and my eyes would much prefer lamplight to the leering illumination of old Luna there!” And all being in agreement, they made their way to the Captain’s cabin.
There, comfortable about Limnar’s table and enjoying sips of his clean, clear wine, listening to the slow creak of timbers and relaxing a little as the lamplight glowed in their faces and shifted with the gentle roll of the ship, the waking-worlders soon began to feel more themselves. Then it was that Limnar bade them relate their doings since last he had seen them. That had been in the seaport of Bahama on the Isle of Oriab in the Southern Sea, where he had dropped them following the destruction of Zura’s fleet of black galleys in the sky off Serannian.
“And while you’re about it,” he added, “you might also like to tell me what you’ve been up to that’s so upset the twin Dukes of Isharra.”
“You know about that?” Hero questioned in return.
“Only that they’re after your blood,” said Limnar with a nod. “And something about two girls, also twins, who you’re supposed to have abducted and seduced?”
“Huh!” grunted the Wanderer. “How the truth gets twisted, eh, Hero? Listen,” he turned to Limnar, “and I’ll tell you how it really was.” For a while Eldin was silent as he poured himself more wine, and then he began:
“Ula and Una were beauties,” he said with feeling, “and they threw themselves at us. Seduction? I hate to admit it but you’re right—except they seduced us! Their reason? Simple. Their daddy had arranged for them to marry these ugly buggers, the so-called Dukes of Isharra, and to qualify they had to be virgins. The girls had minds of their own; they ran off to Bahama and found themselves a pair of likely lads; us, Hero and me.”
“And I,” said Hero.
“I said you,” Eldin grunted. “Be quiet!”
“Go on,” Limnar pressed. “Let’s have the rest of it.”
“The rest you’ve already guessed,” Eldin shrugged. “Ham Gidduf, Ula and Una’s daddy, put a big price on our small heads—bounty-hunters came after us in force—we had to flee Baharna in a hurry. We stole a boat—”
“Again,” said Limnar, knowing that this was nothing new to the pair.
“—And with a lot of luck and fair winds we made it to olden Dylath-Leen on the mainland,” Eldin continued. “There we laid low for a couple of weeks—”
“Until a certain ship sailed in and disgorged a gang of cutthroats on Isharra’s business,” Hero put in.
“—And so we left town under cover of darkness (of which there wasn’t too much due to the size of the blasted moon), crossed the desert until we hit the green banks of the Skai, and followed the river up into Ulthar. We were planning to move on when the temple pigeon found us.”
“A neat trick, that,” said Hero as Eldin finished. “Those birds: how do they do that? Find people like that, I mean, and at night too?”
“The priests of the temple could probably tell you,” said Limnar, “but they wouldn’t. A little magic, one would presume.”
“And would one presume that these people who are tailing us also have magic on their side?” the Wanderer asked. “Or is it simply killer instinct that enables them to track us so surely? They were in Ulthar less than a day behind us, which is why we were planning to move on.”
“Magic, no,” Limnar answered. “Instinct, yes, probably. The Dukes of Isharra are not only ugly, they’re evil. And rich. They can afford to hire the best in bounty-hunters. Oh, I suppose they might have suborned a magician, but it’s doubtful. Magic men usually manage to keep themselves out of that sort of trouble.”
“White magic men, sure,” said Hero, frowning, “but what about a sorcerer? A black magician? To my knowledge they’re not so funny about who they work for.”
Limnar shook his head. “Not many of that sort in the dreamlands,” he said. “And they’re usually loners. They do their plotting or whatever far from the haunts of common men.”
“Right enough,” agreed Eldin. “Old Thinistor Udd was just such a one—until we put a stop to his little game.”
“Well, if magic’s not involved,” mused Hero, “this time we really ought to have lost them. They’ll surely not track us through the night skies of dreamland!”
“Which leads me to my next question,” said Limnar. “Did you two plan to run forever? It’s not like you …”
“Listen,” said Eldin gruffly. “We were hoping they’d tire of the chase. If they didn’t—” He shrugged.
“Then we’d choose our times and places,” Hero continued Eldin’s explanation, “and we’d pick them off one by one. And they pretty soon would tire of that sort of chase!”
“Murder?” said Limnar.
“Self-defense, surely?” the Wanderer half-snorted.
“We’re not murderers,” Hero added, “but we don’t skulk either. Not for the Dukes of Isharra or anyone else.”
At that precise moment, as if to fill an awkward silence, there came a loud banging on the door of the Captain’s cabin. Murmurs of awe and amazement reached the three even through stout wooden walls, then hoarse exclamations as the crew reacted to some unseen wonder. As the banging on the door resounded, more urgently than at first, Limnar barked, “Enter!”
The door crashed open and a crewman stood silhouetted against a deep yellow glare, as if limned against a sky of flaring saffron. “Captain,” the man croaked. “The sky … the moon … !”
“What in all the hells—” Limnar hissed. And in the next moment the three men were springing to their feet, sending tankards and stools flying as they raced for the door.
Hero was first out onto the bridge, then Limnar followed by Eldin. They made for the rail, their eyes staring skyward and following the gaze of those crew members who gathered there. Limnar knocked several of the latter aside and ordered them down onto the deck proper to tend to their duties. They went … but they could not take their eyes from the moon, that mad moon whose sick yellow gleam was now a blinding glare, a pulsating, throbbing brightness like bile vomited up by some great, golden, alien idiot!
Hero shielded his eyes against the ever-brightening glare. “That crater there,” he gasped. “What in all the dreamlands … ? Is it volcanic? Something is spewing out—a beam of brilliant yellow light—and yet more than a beam. Look!”
Limnar and Eldin were looking, hands to their eyes as the great globe of the moon seemed to loom momentarily over the ship, as a giant looms before his foot comes crashing down. Then—
The heavens seemed rent asunder! A great wind blew downward from the moon, blasting the clouds outwards and leaving a clear path in the heavens. Gnorri II felt that mighty rush of air and reeled as her sails were filled and her masts bent before the sudden onslaught of frenzied air. And blown off course as she was—tossed aside like a cork in a flooding river—it was that very moon-spawned maelstrom of wind which saved the ship and her passengers.
For now that mighty moonbeam was reaching down like a solid yellow shaft,
and through all the tumult of air there rang a long, humming, continuous sound like an unending note struck from some great golden anvil or cosmic tuning fork. Down swept that titan moonbeam, expanding, rushing past Gnorri II and striking earthward, striking at the surface of the dreamlands.
Still at the rail, where they clung for their lives as the ship tossed like a leaf in a gale, the three friends gazed down along the path of the great moonbeam to see where it struck. Down there, lit by the evil glare, a hamlet nestled in a bay on the coast of the Southern Sea.
Yellow roofs and paths and fields and gardens—and the vast moonbeam falling to earth and engulfing all! For a moment the beam glared brighter yet, until its liquid fire threatened to burn out the eyes of the three where they stood frozen at the rail, but then—
The golden note rose higher, became a whine—the near hypnotic, faithless song of a siren—and the moonbeam began to retreat, to flow backward along its own path! Not rushing in retreat, no, for this was no rout; almost languorously, writhingly, with a seductive swirling and twining of golden streamers, the beam drew back. And the single note became an almost animal sound, a vast exhalation, the concerted sigh of a million lovers falling back from a scented night’s excesses.
Struck dumb the three could merely listen and look: listen to that slowly changing sigh of sound as it became a massed moan, long-drawn-out, low, pitiful and seeming to signify all hope lost; look as the long golden funnel of light flowed upwards, a tube of irresistible force, the honeyed tongue of a sated siren. Sated, yes, for within that hideous haze of yellow fire—
“By all that’s merciful—” Eldin hoarsely cried.
“Nothing of mercy here!” was Hero’s gasped denial.
“Monstrous!” whispered Limnar. And again: “Monstrous!”
For that beam of light was no longer empty, no longer a mere shaft of golden fire and mindless allure. No, it was filled now. Filled with writhing humanity: the twisting, twining forms of the moon-blasted hamlet’s inhabitants! Men, women and children all—the entire population of that doomed village—their faces staring blindly, in petrified terror, staring up the path of the beam, along which they were drawn like thistledown, resistlessly and inexorably toward some horror as yet unknown … .