Hiero Desteen: 01 - Hiero's Journey (49 page)

The moving spires, such as were not already alight and writhing in their fiery death throes, were aware of him at once. He had been right, he realized; the creatures were indeed sentient! Immediately they knew him to be the author of their misery. The tall columns bent as one in his direction. He could feel an almost material wave of venomous hatred emanating from them as their fellows blazed and shook all around them. The very slime with which their movements had coated the naked rock was itself flammable, and fresh runnels and gutters of moving fire sought out many of those who were nowhere near their burning fellows.

The splendor and horror of the sight almost made him a victim himself. One of the awful spires, whose top was as yet aglow with only its own poisonous foxfire, bent until it pointed in his exact direction. Then, from its crown, a dully glowing series of blobs were launched in Hiero's direction. So unexpected was the attack that he barely had the presence of mind to leap aside as the first ball of glowing slime raced his way. Even so, it splattered almost at his feet, and one minute fragment struck his right hand. The pain was savage, and only the instant application of the oil-soaked rag he still clutched made it die down. He hastily backed away, keeping on his toes, so that the next poisonous missiles came nowhere near. Actually, if one stayed alert, he realized, they were easy to avoid.

All the while he was praying for something else. He had provoked the ruler of this foul realm, carefully and deliberately.
Where was it? Had he guessed wrong?
Mind and body keyed up to the highest degree, he backed slowly away from the inferno of the dying fungi. The stench of the corrupt and burning bodies, and the thick, greasy smoke, made even this close proximity almost unbearable.
Where are you, House, damn you?
And even as he bent his thought upon it, it came.

He had been watching the gaping mouth of the tunnel beyond the pool, a task made increasingly difficult because of the swirling smoke wreaths and nauseating reek, for he was sure this was the entrance to the creature's lair. Perhaps it was, but there were others.

Almost before he had time to realize it, a surge of filthy liquid overflowed the near edge of the buried, underground pool and sent a wave of fluid corruption racing over the floor in his direction, and the bulging, gelatinous horror of the House began to emerge
out of the water.
As it grew in size, it sent one bolt after another of mental force at the lone man.

It was well that Hiero had armored himself against this very time. In odd, waking moments, ever since his first encounter with the monster, he had carefully analyzed its Medusa-like power of paralysis, and he had deduced that its true strength lay in an attack on the psyche, rather than on the actual brain. The emotional centers of the body were its targets, not the reasoning process, and in the subconscious alone could it establish its unearthly stranglehold.

One remote corner of his mind registered mild surprise at the relatively modest size of the alien monstrosity. Its brownish, slimy bulk was not too much higher than his own head and scarcely more than five or six yards in total width. It still preserved the odd, four-cornered shape which had made Vilah-ree name it, but the lines moved and shook, the angles continually re-formed in peculiar abhorrent and sickening ways. Hiero saw also that it could move on its blobby base, just as the horrible candle-things did, and that it could move fast. Also now, long, glistening tendrils or pseudopods sprouted from its upper parts and waved hungrily as it slid rapidly in his direction over the floor. And all the while its ravening hatred and power beat upon his mind. His own rapport with the alien growth had become so strong that he understood why it laired so deep here and what actually he had done when he had attacked the fungoid spires. The pool was the center of not so much a garden but more (though not entirely) a harem!

The seal which he had painstakingly set upon his inner being held. Even so, he prayed for strength as he backed away from the water and into the aisle in the machinery from which he had first come. After him flowed the monster, and behind it, in turn, came the remaining spires.

No more did the House use its vile blandishments to make him an ally and thus attempt to lure him within its reach. For it recognized him. Its hatred of the one being who had ever broken its power and had helped destroy much of its awful kingdom overcame it, until its strange composite mind could think of nothing else but to obliterate the impudent minikin before it. What—did the very inner parts of its buried realm, its hidden mates' playground, hold no safety from this feared and dreaded enemy? On, on, and slay! Its speed increased, and its groping, vibrissal pseudo-pods flailed the dead air as it sought to rend him.

Carefully, judging his speed to a nicety, Hiero fled from the thing and its pack of followers. The assaults on his mind he repelled, content merely to ward off the House's attack and not to try to retaliate. Any such trial on his part might serve instead to open new corners of his own brain to fresh and unknown assaults. Who knew of what else the monster was capable if allowed, even for an instant, to forget its mad rage?

Down the silent, dust-laden corridors, under the dim illumination of the glowing bars of millennia-old light, the strange chase continued. The human fled; the living lord of the slime sought to overtake him and extinguish its bitterest foe from the earth. Save for the light footfalls and breathing of the man and the sucking, slithering noise of the fungoid pack's progress, there was utter quiet. The deadly race, to an observer, would have appeared some strange and voiceless charade or shadow show. The squat House and the tall, dozen remaining mold pillars sped on; the man ran; the shrouded, ancient machines were backdrop.

Always, the priest led his pursuers south, shifting a little back and forth so that it would not be too obvious and straight a road, but never going very far from the line he had chosen. And now, at length, there fell upon his ear a sound for which he had yearned. It was the distant vibration of a legion of people moving, the faint but distinct echo of many feet! The Unclean host was upon them and must even now be debouching into the great cavern!

Still, husbanding his strength, Hiero ran on; and, implacable as ever, the alien master of the mold-things and its last minions followed on his track, centuries-old dust by now coloring them all the same pallid gray.

At a certain intersection of two opposing aisles, Hiero suddenly increased his speed. His careful appearance of fatigue was suddenly shed, as quickly as that of a parent bird whose apparently broken wing has led the searcher far from, its huddled young.

Now he turned and darted away at full speed, taking the House by surprise as he did so. He flashed away toward the south wall and then—barely before leaving the shelter of the machines—darted into a narrow gap between two huge engines and was gone. One instant the House thought it had him trapped, the next he was utterly vanished!

Ravening, the unstable, shifting bulk increased its speed, layers of filth and dust flying as it sped forward in the manner of some Brobdingnagian snail on its rippling base, its slender mates coming on in its wake.

Hiero, now two hundred yards off and well to the left of his former track, peered cautiously out toward the open, the southern end of the ancient cave. What he saw made him draw breath in exultation.

Pouring into the cave, rank upon rank, file upon file, came the massed forces of the Unclean. Even as he watched, the last ones entered the great cave, and the tunnel gaped empty behind them. At least two hundred creatures were already streaming across the open, some of them men in dark uniform clothes, armed with pikes, others Leemutes in their own skins. He recognized red Hairy Howlers, brown Man-rats, and, far off to one side, a clump of the new things he had first encountered on the ship, the Gliths, their gray, scaly hides glistening. Not far from the entrance itself, marshaling their forces, were a group of men in dark cloaks and hoods. The adepts were preparing for a master stroke, and he smiled grimly as he thought that only one man was the cause of all this preparation! Truly, the enemy had not been properly challenged for a long time.

And then it happened. The first part of his desperate scheme came to fruition, just as he had
planned it and willed it, but (down inside) never dared believe it would.

Out into the open from the central passageway, charging along in its blind rage, seeking the hated human and oblivious of ail else, came the House!

From his vantage point, Hiero could see it all, every stage of the weird ensuing drama. All movement ceased instantly out on the quarter mile of open, between the machines and the cavern wall Not a man, not an Unclean mutant, stirred. The little group of hooded masters of evil were frozen, standing with their heads together, as if turned to ice in the middle of their plots.

He spared a glance for the House. It too had checked and come to a halt, and for once its own unstable, wobbly outlines were not moving. A little way out in the open from the street he had just quit, it halted, its acolytes motionless also. Its pursuit was forgotten as it strove to adjust to a new situation with all the power at its command.

I'm right!
the priest exulted. The strange, mesmeric power of the House was unaffected by the Unclean mechanical screens, screens which Hiero himself had been unable to penetrate. The House really did not operate on the brain at all, and the blocking power the Unclean scientists had devised was therefore useless against it.

Around him, surging in a way which to his sensitive mind was practically physical, Hiero could feel the ferocious wills of the Unclean overlords struggling to be free. But the only free brains in the House's environs now were his own and those under his protection. The monster's pressure upon his had ceased as it grappled with its new and unexpected foes. It had never had so many creatures to control before and it was having a hard time holding them immobile. Hiero, observing from the "outside," so to speak, could actually feel, with his mind, the House's efforts to maintain its screen as the swarm of enemy beings tried to break the hold it had laid on their bodies.

But now the priest was himself in motion again, running hard to the left along the southern tier of silent engines. He kept in the shadows, and neither the House nor the Unclean army seemed aware of his flitting shape, engrossed as they were in their silent grapple.

In a few moments he spied tracks in the dust ahead of him, coming from the center of the mechanical maze, and followed them to an alcove between two canopied buttresses. Here, Brother Aldo, the girl, and the bear were waiting, the humans' faces strained and intent and even Gorm shaking with excitement and shifting nervously from one paw to another.

Come on!
Hiero sent.
Don't even think from now on if you can help it. I'm going to keep covering your minds. Aldo
—
build a reserve shield under mine, if you can. Now, let's go—fast!

"Hiero," Luchare cried, trying to say something, but the blazing glance he spared her made whatever message she had die unspoken.

They were only a few steps from the open space on the south, and he led them quickly out into it. He felt Luchare, whom he was actually leading by the hand, tremble at her first sight of the massed enemy off to their right, but she never faltered. Behind them, the other two trotted in their
wake, raising yet more dust.
By now,
Hiero thought,
we must be visible. God help us if my screen drops!

The House did indeed sense their motion somehow. Despite the efforts it was putting forth to hold the Unclean ranks imprisoned, it spared another bolt for them. Hiero warded it off, using his new technique, with almost contemptuous ease. Once one knew how the House operated, its traps were not all that clever, and besides, now it could spare only a fraction of its strength.

But to the other enemy, who had never met it before, its methods were deadly indeed. Strain as they might, the Unclean army, masters and slaves, Leemute and human, could not move a muscle. Two evil forces worked to allow the good freedom!

Soon Hiero was compelled to pass close to a squad of black-clad soldiers with dark, metal helmets and long spears. They had been racing toward the northern section and the House had caught and held them in mid-stride. Their eyes gleamed with deadly hatred as the four loped by, but they could not twitch so much as a finger to impede their progress.

Another such group and another they passed, living yet locked like statues in the foul embrace of the fungoid horror.

Next they passed what had been a crouching, bounding crew of giant Man-rats, creatures Hiero knew well from the past as devilish foes, huge, mutated rodents with all of human reasoning ability and clawed hands as capable as any man's. Their fists now clutched sharp knives, clubs, and long lances, while their brown-furred bodies bore elaborate harness and equipment. But no more than their human allies could they break the grip of the House on muscle and nerve. Only the red eyes glared with hate.

Next, close to the mouth of the tunnel itself, the fleeing four came to the half-dozen hooded shapes of the enemy commanders. Of those looking his way, Hiero could see the knowledge and hatred flare in their eyes as his little group passed by. But though they would, he did not doubt, cheerfully die in order that he too might be slain, they were as helpless as the stupidest and least of the evil servitors in their forces. For it was obvious that they did not understand the House's power and methods any more than had the warrior-priest himself when he first encountered it.