Andrew Offutt: The Tower of Death

An amazing man, this Zarabdas of Palmyra of the sands! Full and full of surprises had he proven, this man Cormac was now sure was far from the plotting inimical magicker he’d at first thought.

Wine was poured by those winsome servants, and Wulfhere and Cormac kept their hands and remarks to themselves.

“Fetch the crock of ale from ’neath the floorboard,” Zarabdas said, and when that had been done: “Become scarce and deaf, Zenobia and Odainata; we have business and did you hear it you would be in terrible danger.”

The woman and the girl, whose names Zarabdas had surely been pleased to give them himself, made themselves scarce.

“Terrible danger?” Cormac said.

“Only some. We do border on treason, keeping matters from the king whilst we decide what to tell him. But such words, and we being who we are, ensure that my pretty little girls will not try to listen far more than would a closed door.”

“Excellent!” Wulfhere said. “Suberb wine! I’d think ye’d merely put a spell of sleep on them. He eyed the jug of ale.

“I do not spell,” Zarabdas said quietly, “save at my king’s command. I am a man of another people, far from here; of a city smashed into ruin by the Romans two centuries agone so that now it is but a shadow of the Palmyra of Odainath and that great queen Zenobia. Here I am welcome, and well treated, and honoured. An my loyalty and restraint make me a strange mage, so be it. I do not seek to be like other men… any more than do you two, who slay so few on captured ships.”

“The barge-” Irnic prompted.

“Is gone,” Cormac said. “Smashed and sunk. Those who crewed and accompanied it are dead, to number half a hundred.”

“Accompanied-”

“Half a-”

Cormac and Wulfhere told them of their activities this night, with Wulfhere discovering and declaiming the while that Zarabdas’s crock-sealed ale was the best this side of Dane-mark. Irnic and Zarabdas listened closely, and asked questions. Disbelief was neither considered nor possible.

“By Arawn’s horns!” Irnic grunted at last, challenging the Dane for the large glazed pot of ale. “What foulness! And the kelp?”

“Guided by them,” Cormac said. “Sent by them, only to stop the beacon so that theirs could lure men to death… doubtless that barge grew in size with each ship they seized! The seaweed is only seaweed. Without its masters to send it, it is no menace to anyone-but can be excellent in a stewpot with pork!”

“Foulness indeed,” Zarabdas said. “Cthulhu is a god not of this earth! We may be sure that what your men interrupted tonight, Commander, was a temple to that same tentacled god who hates humankind. And… now I suppose I suspect something else, though we may never know, unless she’s found. Ah, fool that I’ve been! Wise Zarabdas, never to have suspected, much less guessed! Yet it’s from a flower in the desert called Palmyra I come, far from the sea. As for Lucanor… a native of Antioch that one is, close to the cultish Levantine lands. There is the ancient home, ye see, of such as the Phoenicians and Philistines… seafaring peoples. Aye, and we may be sure that the Philistine sea-god Dagon is no other in truth than Cthulhu from… elsewhere. Off this very earth. As for Lucanor-who can doubt that he studied in Levantine cities? Was he brought the cult here, and was he moved swiftly to bind to him certain peasants he treated…”

“ And nobles,” Irnic said. “Or a noble: forget not Lord Unscel!”

“ And ,” Zarabdas said, “the queen.”

And they were silent with thoughts none of them liked.

Cormac broke that silence: “Suppose Lucanor came here because he divined the location of Cthulhu’s keep…”

“R’lyeh,” Zarabdas said. “And you are convinced it is just off our shores.”

“Aye. Fathoms down, where once plains rolled. I know.”

Irnic and the mage stared with knitted brows at the Gael.

“Dispute him not,” Wulfhere said, with a most unusual quietness of voice. “When my battle-brother says he knows something such as that, we other men may merely accept. A god has touched this son of a noble of Eirrin,” the Dane solemnly told them, ignoring the fact that he was wont japingly to call his Gaelic swordbrother a pig-farmer’s son. “He knows better than any that some life-forces return again and again, for-”

“All,” Irnic said.

“All souls return in the Endless Ring,” Zarabdas said.

“Well, we Danes don’t hold so, though Cormac’s experiences have troubled me with frowns on this happy face. Yet who would question our skalds-and who’d dare give the question to the All-father and his thunder-bringing son!” He gave three unbelieving foreigners a mildly truculent look. “At any rate, Cormac remembers . It comes on him like a dream, and him awake. If he says that once the Sueves were green with purple hair, believe him. If he says I was once Alexander of the Greeks, I believe him. If he says we slew Cthulhu’s servants just on the doorstep of his undersea keep- believe. ”

“Never am I after telling ye it’s Alexander ye be, Wulfhere.”

“No, but it’s a pleasant thought, a great conqueror and all-and he was red of hair, wasn’t he?”

Cormac made a face and waved a hand impatiently. “Ye’ve heard our tale. The sea and Brigantium Harbour are clear. Now what of your activities this night, Breaker of Axen?”

“Some time I must tell you how I came by my sobriquet,” Irnic said, but no smile lighted his face. “Was a dark cult we crushed this night. Nor did we invade that hellish temple soon enow. A peasant child-a sweet little thing with fine parents I’d night with-was sacrificed in a foul rite this night, the way we have not done for centuries! Aye, and still in Lucanor’s hand was that bloody knife when we broke in, in force, and in his other hand her… her dripping heart. All the members of that cult he presided over are… being detained. Three fought like demons, but we took them alive; including the noble Unscel-my own wife’s cousin! Others were there, though, as guards: those wore weapons and mail under their muffling cloaks, and gave battle. Sore was the shield-clashing for a time, and more blood than an innocent child’s now splashes that place. My men were taken by surprise, and slow to draw steel and fight in a temple , until one was down bleeding. I lost that man. Another bears a wound will keep him down for months. As for the cult-guards: all are dead save one. Him we persuaded to speak, as he liked not the prospect of a candle’s being prodded into his wound and therein turned.”

Wulfhere and Cormac showed teeth, though the Dane’s grim grin was broader.

“Not Suevi, those armed men,” Irnic went on, “but of Cantanabria our neighbour. They represented only themselves. Of that we made sure-we have no official quarrel with Cantanabria. Was they, Cormac, who sought to do murder on ye, that day in the meadow. On Lucanor’s orders.”

“Gladness is on me to know that,” Cormac said, for he’d liked not the thought that some of Galicia abhorred him for a reiver so much as to try to do murder on him. “And what of Lucanor himself, Irnic?”

Irnic lurched up from his seat and paced away. He whirled to face them, his back to a multi-hued eastern tapestry. His face worked.

“Lucanor escaped. He vanished . Nay, wait and give listen. There were-there are but two means of entering and leaving that temple. We entered through both at once, and left men outside, too. Yet Lucanor stabbed my man who sought to arrest him, there beside the very altar where the child’s blood still dripped. Then he whirled and fled into a dark niche behind the altar, with his damned blood-red robe and black cloak flapping like a great bat. And then he was not there. Nor did he leave by either door, for men waited outside. They could not have missed the emergence of a mouse.”