City of Golden Shadow, Page 69

  The airboat's angle of descent steepened. With the ship plunging downward at such an angle that it was all Paul could do simply to hold on to the railing, Hurley Brummond left his position at the helm, dragging himself forward hand over hand along the railing, then tugged at a great metal handle on the back of the ship's cabin. All the ship's lanterns, on the bow, on the sailcloth wings, and along the hull, suddenly went dark. The airboat continued to plummet.

  A towertop suddenly leaped up on one side of the ship and flashed upward past them. Another daggered up just beyond the rail on Paul's side, so close he felt he could touch it. A third sprouted beside the first. Terrified, Paul looked through the carved railing. The ship was hurtling down toward an entire forest of needle-sharp minarets.

  "My God!" Paul jerked Gally toward him, although he knew mere was nothing he could do to protect the boy."We're going to. . . ."

  The ship suddenly bottomed out, throwing Paul and the others to the deck. A moment later it shuddered to a halt in midair, hovering in the midst of a thicket of pointed roofs. Brummond had scrambled back to the helm. "Sorry about the bump," he brayed. "Had to snuff the lanterns, though! We're going to surprise them."

  As Paul helped Gally to his feet, Brummond was tipping a furled rope ladder over the railing. As it rustled down into darkness, he straightened with a satisfied smile on his face.

  "Perfect. We're right over the Imperial Gardens, just as I thought. They'll never expect us to go that way. We'll be in and out with your fair lady in the blink of an eye, Jonas old man."

  Professor Bagwalter was still kneeling on the deck, searching for his glasses. "I say, Hurley, that was a bit uncalled-for, wasn't it? I mean, couldn't we have made a bit more leisurely approach?"

  Brummond shook his head with obvious fondness. "Bags, you old stick-in-the-mud! You know my motto: 'Move like the wind, strike like lightning.' We aren't going to give these ghastly priest chappies a chance to spirit our quarry away. Now, let's get cracking. Jonas, you'll come, of course. Bags, I know you're anxious for a little action, but perhaps you should stay here with the ship, be ready to take off. Besides, someone ought to keep an eye on the young lad."

  "I want to go!" Gally's eyes were bright.

  "No, against my rules." Brummond shook his head. "What do you say. Bags? I know it's hard cheese on you, but just this once perhaps you should give the adventure side a miss."

  The professor did not seem unduly put out. In fact, Paul thought he seemed grateful for the excuse. "If you think it best. Hurley."

  "That's settled, then. Let me just strap on old Betsy here. . . ." Brummond opened the lid of a trunk beside the steering wheel and removed a sheathed cavalry saber, which he belted around his hips. He turned to Paul."How about you, old man? Weapon of choice? I might have put a pistol or two in here, but you'll have to promise not to spark one off until I give the word." Brummond pulled out a pair of what to Paul seemed vaguely archaic sidearms and peered down their barrels. "Good. Both loaded." He passed them over to Paul, who shoved them in his belt. "After all, we don't want to let the priests know we're on our way any earlier than we have to, hmmmm?" Brummond continued to dig in the chest. "So you'll need something to start with, too. Ah, just the ticket."

  He straightened up, holding an outlandishly ornate weapon that seemed part ax, part spear, and which stood two-thirds of Paul's height, "Here you go. It's a Vonari saljak. Surprisingly good for close-in work, and rather appropriate, since your fiancée's one of 'em. A Vonari, I mean."

  As Paul stared at the strange, filigreed weapon, Brummond trotted to the railing and swung his leg over. "Come on, old man. Time to go." Feeling almost helpless, as though he moved through someone else's dream, Paul followed him over the railing.

  "Be careful," said Gally, but Paul thought the boy looked like he was enjoying the prospect of violent danger more than he ought to be.

  "Do try to keep Hurley from creating an interplanetary incident," added Bagwalter.

  Paul found it difficult to climb with the saljak in one hand. A hundred feet below the ship—and still half that distance from the ground—Brummond stopped and waited impatiently for him.

  "I say, old chap, you'd think it was someone else's sweetheart entirely that we were on our way to rescue. We're going to lose the element of surprise."

  "I'm . . . I'm not really used to this sort of thing." Paul swayed, his free hand sweaty against the ladder's rungs.

  "Here." Brummond reached up and took the saljak from him, then resumed his descent. Paul now found it easier to descend, and could even look around for the first time. They were surrounded still, but by oddly shaped trees rather than towers. The garden seemed to stretch a great distance in all directions: the warm Martian night was full of the scent of growing things.

  There was something about the thick greenery and the silence that tickled his memory. Plants. . . . He struggled to remember. It seemed somehow important. A forest surrounded by walls. . . .

  Brummond had stopped again, this time at the bottom of the ladder, a short jump from the ground. Paul slowed. Whatever memory the Imperial Gardens had called to now slid out of reach once more, replaced by a more recent concern. "You said that they would never expect us to come in this way, but I saw lots of airships tonight. Why will this surprise them?"

  His companion slid his saber out of its sheath, then vaulted lightly to the ground. Huge, flesh-colored blossoms swayed in a breeze Paul could not feel. Some of the trees had thorns as long as a man's arm, and others bore flowers that looked like wet, hungry mouths. Paul shuddered and jumped down.

  "Because of the vormargs. actually," Brummond said in a confidential whisper. He tossed over the saljak; Paul had to twist to avoid catching it by the razor-sharp blade. "Most people are scared to death of the things." He set off at a swift pace. Paul hurried after him.

  "Vormargs? What are those?"

  "Martian beasties. 'Snake-apes,' some people call 'en Ugly bastards."

  Paul had only a half-second to absorb this concept before something huge, shaggy, and stinking dropped from a tree into the middle of the path.

  "Speak of the devil!" said Brummond, and swiped at the thing with his saber. Even as the creature snarled and shied back—Paul had a glimpse of slotted yellow eyes and a wide snout full of curving fangs—two more shapes dropped from a tree beside them. Paul only just managed to get the Vonari ax up in time to ward off a long-taloned paw lashing toward hit face; even so, the blow loosened his grip on the weapon and nearly knocked him over.

  "Don't drive them toward the palace," called Brummond He had engaged two of the beasts simultaneously, and his saber was an almost invisible blur in the moonlight. "Keep them here in the dark part of the garden."

  If Paul could have managed to drive them anywhere, he would have done so happily, but he was hard-pressed just to stay alive. The hairy thing in front of him seemed to have arms as long as buggy-whips; just blocking them as they slapped at his face and belly consumed every part of his strength and speed. He thought of the pistols, but realized he could not possibly draw one before the thing would be on him with its venom-dripping fangs at his neck.

  Even Brummond was finding it difficult to talk now. From the corner of his eye Paul saw something stagger back, for a terrifying moment he thought it was his companion, but then he heard the other man's quiet chuckle of pleasure as one of the beasts fell and did not rise. Still, the second of the vormargs seemed quite capable of occupying Brummond until its comrade had finished with Paul.

  Paul took a step backward and almost stumbled over an exposed tree root. As he regained his balance, his enemy leaped toward him. In desperation he flung the saljak in the snake-ape's face. The weapon was not balanced for throwing; it turned in midair, striking the creature heavily and knocking it off-balance, but doing little damage. During the moment's lull, Paul tugged one of the pistols from his belt, pushed it as close to the vormarg's face as he could reach and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell. For a hideously long split-sec
ond nothing happened, and then the gun jerked and made a noise like a thunderclap as fire vomited from the end of the barrel. The snake-ape sat down, nothing left atop its shoulders but blood, tatters of burnt flesh, and fur.

  "For heaven's sake, old chap, what are you doing?" Brummond was clearly irritated. He had braced his boot against the chest of the second vormarg he had killed so he could pull his saber out of its belly. "I told you not to touch that off until I said to."

  Paul was too busy struggling for breath to argue.

  "Well, if there are any more of these lovelies around, that'll bring 'em down on us like flies on a honey-wagon—not to mention that you've doubtless woken up the Soombar's Onyx Guard. We'd better leg it toward the Imperial Residence and make the best of a bad business. I must say, I'm disappointed in you, Jonas." Brummond wiped his saber on a leaf the size of a tea tray, then sheathed it with one thrust. "Come along." He turned and trotted away through the vegetation.

  Paul picked up the saljak and stumbled after him. He tucked the pistol he had fired into his belt and pulled out the other one, just to be prepared. It was impossible to guess what ghastly death trap this idiot might lead him into next.

  Brummond sprinted through the tangle of the Imperial Gardens as though he had been doing it all his life, with Paul pounding along doggedly behind. Within moments they reached a stone wall that rose dozens of feet, featureless but for a single window more than a man's height above the ground. Brummond vaulted up and caught at the sill, then pulled himself up. He reached down a hand and dragged Paul after him.

  The room before them was empty but for a group of stone urns stacked in one corner, and was lit only by a candle guttering in an alcove. Brummond dropped down from the window and moved on noiseless feet toward the far door, listened there for a moment, then led them into the brighter, torchlit hallway outside.

  The hall was also unoccupied, but sounds coming from one direction—harsh voices and the rattle of armor—suggested it would not be that way for long. Brummond snatched one of the row of torches from its sconce and touched it to the hem of a tapestry that filled the middle reaches of the wall as far in both directions as Paul could see, an endless and incomprehensible record of animal-headed people at work and play. Flames ran along the tapestry's bottom edge and began to climb upward.

  "Come on. man." Brummond grabbed Paul's arm and dragged him away. "That's to slow the Onyx Guard down a jot. A quick sprint and we'll be in the temple precinct!"

  Bits of burning tapestry had already fallen to the floor, where the carpet was beginning to smolder. Other flames were already pawing at the heavy wooden ceiling beams. The hallway was beginning to fill with smoke.

  Taltors appeared in some of the doorways as Paul followed Hurley Brummond down the long hallway. Most appeared to have been sleeping. It was clearly hard to tell an Earthling complexion from the greenish skin of the Ullamari by torchlight: several of the palace residents shouted excited questions at them, thinking—more rightly than they knew—that these hurrying men might be privy to the nature of the emergency.

  Not all were so passive. One huge taltor soldier whose black livery suggested he must be part of the Onyx Guard Brummond had mentioned stepped out of a crossing corridor to bar their path. Paul's companion, showing a slightly surprising degree of restraint, merely dealt him a swift uppercut to the jaw; Paul, a few paces behind, was forced to vault over the collapsed guardsman.

  This is all like something out of an old film, he thought, some Arabian Nights melodrama, and for an instant that thought opened a whole vista of memory in his head, of countless things and names and ideas, as though someone had swung wide the doors of a great library. Then he slipped on the polished floor and nearly went headfirst onto the stone tiles. By the time he had regained his balance and was hurrying after Brummond again, the mental fog had returned. But he knew now that there was something behind it, that this murkiness was not his natural state. He felt a surge of hope.

  Brummond skidded to a stop before a tall archway sealed by a heavy door. "This is it," he said. The noises of pursuit and the sounds of confused palace residents had merged into a single rising din behind them. "Don't believe everything you see in here, and don't lose your head. Also, don't kill anyone! The Soombar's priesthood has a deuced long memory!" Without waiting for a reply, he slammed his shoulder against the door. It rattled in its sockets but did not open. Brummond took a step back, then kicked at it. The door shivered and fell inward, the bolt broken off on the inside.

  A few white-robed Martians who had apparently come to investigate the first assault on the door were standing just beyond the threshold. Brummond bowled them over like tenpins.

  As Paul followed him through, another who had been lurking behind the doorway leapt out. Paul stunned him with the handle of the saljak.

  "Now you're in the spirit of the thing!" Brummond shouted. "Head for the inner sanctum."

  They pelted down another long corridor lined with huge statues of the same beast-headed beings who had decorated the tapestry, then broke through another doorway, this one little more than a ceremonial screen, and were greeted by a blast of hot, foggy air. They were in a large chamber. An ornamental pool shrouded in steam filled the center of the room. Several more priests, these wearing golden beast masks, looked up in startlement at their sudden entrance.

  Brummond sprinted around the edge of the pool, pausing only to fling one of the masked priests into the water. The splash set the mists eddying, and for a split-second Paul could see clearly to the far side of the room. The winged woman was slumped on a bench, her chin on her chest, her thick, dark hair falling forward so that it almost hid her face—but it was her, Paul knew it beyond a doubt. Paul felt a thrill of horror to see her so seemingly lifeless. All this lunatic adventure had been to rescue her—but was he too late?

  He sprinted forward. Two hissing priests rose up before him out of the mist, waving long thin daggers. He lifted the saljak horizontally before him and knocked them backward, stepping on one of them as he hurtled past. Brummond was on the other side of the pool, keeping three more robed assailants at bay with his saber. Paul ducked under a priest's dagger stroke, dealt a backhand blow that sent another sprawling to the tiles, then reached the stone bench in a few steps. He reached out his hand and cupped the woman's face, lifting it. Her pale blue skin was warm, her eyes half-open. She had been drugged in some way—but she was alive. He was seized by an intense joy, a feeling as foreign as it was powerful. He had found someone who meant something to him, who perhaps knew something of who he was, where he came from.

  "Oh, for heaven's sake, Jonas, what are you waiting for? Must I keep swapping chops with these greenskins all night?"

  Paul leaned forward to pick her up, but discovered that her hands were manacled to the bench. Brummond was still holding the trio of priests at the end of his sword, but several others had escaped and were running for the door, doubtless to alert the guard. Paul stretched the woman out on the bench, pulling her arms out straight above her head, aimed carefully, brought the saljak down as hard as he could, sending it flying like popcorn. He lifted her, careful not to crush her wings, and threw her over his shoulder.

  "I've got her!"

  "Then leg it, man, leg it!"

  Paul staggered a little as he made his way back around the pool. She did not weigh much—in fact, she was surprisingly light—but he was running out of strength and the saljak heavy. After only a moment's consideration he let it fall, so could wrap both arms around his precious burden.

  He and Brummond met on the far side of the pool plunged through the doorway. They had gone only a few steps when another priest stepped into their path, this one robed in black; his golden mask was a featureless disk with eyeholes. The priest raised his staff and the air seemed to thicken. A moment later, a huge spiderlike beast appeared before them entirely blocking the corridor. Paul took a step backward in horror.

  "Run at it!" Brummond shouted. Paul looked at him with incomprehending
despair. "I said run at it! It ain't real!" When Paul still did not move, Brummond shook his head in frustration and lunged forward. The spider-thing dropped down at him, appearing to enfold him in its clicking jaws. A moment later it faded like a shadow blasted by sunlight. Where it had crouched, Brummond stood over the supine form of the black-robed priest, whom he had just stunned with the pommel of hit cavalry saber.

  "We'll never make it out the way we came in," Brummond shouted, "but I think there's a door to the roof somewhere."

  Overwhelmed, but determined to get the Vonari woman to safety, Paul hobbled behind Brummond as the adventurer led them through the twisting side-passages of the temple precinct. Brummond plucked a torch from the wall, and within moments they had left the lighted main halls behind. Paul could not help but be impressed by the way Brummond found his way through the dark and confusing maze. The journey lasted only minutes, but seemed much longer: Paul was again caught up in the feeling that he was living through someone else's dream. Only the tangible warmth and weight of the woman on his shoulder kept him anchored in reality.

  At last Brummond found the stairwell. Paul was staggering as they made their way out onto the roof to stand, as he had doubted they ever would again, free beneath the twin moons. 'Of course, damn the luck, Bags is waiting over the Garden," Brummond said. "And unless I'm hearing things, the Guard is going to be with us any moment." Paul could also hear the sounds of angry soldiers swarming up the stairwell, Brummond took his torch and flung it up in the air as hard as he could. It arched high and then fell, flame rippling behind it like the tail of a shooting star.

  "Just pray old Bags is keeping his eyes open. Now you'd better put her down and help me lean on this door." Paul gently set the winged woman on the rooftop—she murmured something, but did not awake—then added his flagging strength to Brummond's. Already there were people shouting and pushing at the door. Once it was nearly forced open, but Paul and Brummond got their feet under them and slowly shoved it back.