Rise of the Death Dealer (48 page)

Robin nodded, and Brown John opened the door, letting in bright daylight and
a burst of roaring approval from the waiting audience. When the audience
whistled and cheered again, the sounds drew her out through the door as if she
were on a string. Before her bare feet touched the warm stone of the auction
block, she was beaming.

Brown John closed the door behind her and sat down tiredly on a trunk,
listening. Outside, the crowd shouted and applauded loudly, and the drums beat
out a happy rhythm.

When the noise reached a crescendo, Cobra lifted the hammer she had taken
from the
bukko
’s trunk, held the black doll against the floor boards and
brought the hammer down hard. She hit it five more times, timing each blow so
that the noise was covered by the crowd. Then she brushed the crumbles of stone
and dust through cracks in the floor boards scattering it on the ground beneath
the wagon.

Finished, she sat down on the stool facing Brown John, and her chain swung
lazily between them. “Feel better?” Brown John asked.

“A great deal better,” she said solemnly. “But you look feverish.” She smiled
knowingly. “It bothers you to look upon her naked flesh, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed it
does,” he said candidly.

“Youth is always a mystery,” she said lightly, “and from what I have seen,
you are easily seduced by mysteries.”

He laughed. “I most surely am. Some are so confounding, I find them
irresistible.”

She knew again that he referred to her and smiled. He gathered up the chain
between them until it was taut, and gave it a slight tug, asking, “If I remove
the chain, will you answer a question… truthfully?”

“It will depend on the
question.”

“There is something special about Robin. There always has been, and I am
convinced that you know things about her that I don’t.” His tone hardened. “I
must know what they are.”

“That is simple enough,” she replied in a casual tone. Then she lied, saying,
“Apart from her high spirit and extraordinary beauty, she is not special, not to
women. But I understand why you think she is. She makes you feel young again.”

He listened to the drums and slap of Robin’s bare feet on the stone outside,
then nodded. “That is true. When I first met her, she did make me feel young.
But not now. There’s something else.”

“You don’t feel young now?” she asked behind a skeptical smile.

“Indeed I do. But it’s not Robin. It’s you.”

He pulled on the chain, trying to draw her to him, but she resisted, and
their eyes held each other, sober and heated. Then she said slowly, “Don’t
flatter me, Brown. It makes me feel strange and weak, and I am not used to such
emotions.”

“I am not flattering you,” he said.

“Yes, you are,” she insisted. “I have seen you looking at the growing weight
at my hips and the wrinkles appearing on my throat.” She hesitated. “You know I
am quickly growing older.”

“I suspected it,” he replied without concern. “But I don’t understand. It’s
not natural. It’s happening too fast. When we met, I would have sworn you were
no more than twenty-five.”

“Twenty-six,” she said, correcting him. “The Queen of Serpents is twenty-six
all her life. It is part of the contract with the Master of Darkness. But when
you are no longer queen, and only a woman again, you slowly return to your
rightful age.”

“Which is?”

She smiled. “That, Brown, will remain a mystery… but we are not as far
apart as you might have thought.”

“I was thinking the same thing myself,” he said, white eyebrows arching
dramatically. He tugged on the chain again. She stood slowly, came into his lap,
smiling, and put her arms around his neck. He kissed her throat, and she stopped
him, scolding him with a regal frown.

“You’re forgetting who I am.”

“No,” he said, with the balls of his ruddy cheeks burning brightly, “but I’m
working on it.”

She laughed easily, and her voluptuous body came against his, surrendering in
a dozen places. He stroked her throat, then her hair. As he did, the play slowly
went out of their eyes, and their lips parted as their breath quickened. With
his eyes on hers, he removed the chain and set it aside. Then he reached for her
face, and her hands caught his, stopping him.

“Be careful, Brown,” she whispered, “I am not who you think I am.”

“I’m counting on that,” he said.

She hesitated, then let go of his hand, and he placed it at the back of her
head, guiding her lips toward his. The trapdoor slammed open in the room above,
followed by the sound-of feet dropping heavily to the floor. Cobra and Brown
John stood abruptly. The feet descended the enclosed staircase, and Jakar
appeared, loading his crossbow. His words were controlled but rapid.

“The slavers have gathered here to begin a search for Robin. The Nymph Queen
has offered a huge reward for her, and word is being sent to every slave hunter
in every land, as far as the eastern border of the Great Forest Basin. It’s just
the beginning of the hunt that could take years.”

“They don’t suspect she’s here?” blurted Cobra. Jakar shook his head. “I
doubt if they would believe you if you told them.”

“Thank the Good Goddess for that,” Brown John said, sighing with relief.

“But if they are hunting for her,” Cobra said urgently, “they must have some
way of identifying her.”

“Every girl collected will be brought here and inspected.”

“But only Tiyy has the power to identify her.”

“How?” demanded Brown John.

“She knows what I told the Master of Darkness about Robin, about the nature
of her spirit, and she can see a spirit as easily as you can see a cloud in the
sky.” She turned back to Jakar, and her voice faltered. “She’s… Tiyy’s not
here, is she?”

“No!” Jakar said solemnly. “But that bastard sharkman is.”

Brown John glanced with concern at Cobra. “Can he identify you?”

She nodded. “I’ll stay in the wagon.” She hesitated, then added, “But I don’t
understand. If he’s here to identify her, he must have some way to do it.”

“I can’t pull her off that stage now,” said the
bukko.
“They’d become
suspicious.”

“I know,” Cobra said. She looked at Jakar. “Is there anything else you should
tell us?”

He nodded. “They’re not just hunting for Robin. Rewards are being posted for
Gath, for you,” he indicated Cobra, then Brown John, “and for the bukko of the
Grillards.”

Cobra had to sit down, and Brown John stared in shock.

Jakar shrugged. “I couldn’t find out why, but it’s getting interesting, isn’t
it? I have a feeling this Nymph Queen knows more about us than we know
ourselves.” His eyes laughed coldly, and he bounded back up the stairs. “I’ll be
on the roof.”

Brown John listened until he heard the trapdoor slam, then looked down at
Cobra.

“It’s the doll,” she said. “This is Black Veshta’s work.”

The
bukko
looked down at his offending hands and forced a lighthearted
tone. “She’s really touchy, isn’t she?”

Cobra looked at him angrily, dumbfounded at his levity. But when she saw his
smile, its warmth softened her.

“Is this what it means to be human,” she chuckled, “laughing at the face of
death?”

He nodded, and said with deliberate profundity, “Laughter is good, but
sometimes there are better things.”

He took her head in his hands, kissed her full on the lips, then stepped back
smiling. “You can blame Black Veshta for that too.”

She laughed lightly and shook her head. “If that is all you wish of me, then
Black Veshta has nothing to do with it.”

He reached for her again, but she pulled away, shaking her head. “Hurry now!
Find Gath!”

He hesitated. “You didn’t answer my question about Robin.”

“I know nothing more,” she said, and lowered her voice. “Trust me, Brown.
Please.”

He nodded and went out the rear door.

BASKT

T
he huge sharkman paced inside his tent, cursing the heat and his living
armor which he could not remove. The desert was already butchering his body and
mind after only three days, and there would be hundreds more, perhaps thousands,
before some lucky slaver chanced upon the girl and brought her to him.

With a convulsive growl he cursed Tiyy, then the desert sun. As if in reply,
a gust of air parted the tent’s flaps allowing a shaft of golden sunlight to cut
through the grey gloom and sear the blistered plates of armor at the backs of
his legs. He strode to the flaps and whipped them shut. For a moment he stood
motionless, helplessly breathing the stench of decay rising from his scabbed
armor plates. He smelled like a dead codfish rotting in the sun.

He crossed to a small altar at the back of the tent and stood before it,
rubbing his jaw. Lying on the altar was a black doll, an extremely voluptuous
version of Black Veshta lolling in supine sexual invitation on a pile of shark
teeth. Baskt reached into his mouth, pried out a handful of teeth and tossed
their bloody bodies into the box. Then he prostrated himself in front of the
altar and prayed to the doll, asking it, as he had five times already that day,
for rain.

Finished, he picked up a jar of wine and stood over Schraak, drinking.

The slick little man lay naked and oiled between three shuddering nomad girls
chained to his bed. His grey flesh was raw, and his cheeks were a sickly blue.
The worm had been drunk or drugged ever since they had ridden into the desert.

Baskt grunted bitterly and moved away. He would have liked to be in the same
stupor, but did not dare. He had to keep moving in order to breathe, and the
incessant itching would not let him rest anyway.

There was a distant, rolling boom. It had the definite cracking roar of
thunder, but he dismissed the notion. He was certain it was the body of the
desert bending again under the heat of the sun.

A flash of light again speared through the tent wall, this time using a hole,
and a bright whiteness illuminated the deep clefts where his cold death eyes
hid. His sharp nose twitched, and the scent of blood reached his brain. A
feeding fury instantly leapt through his flesh, and his body spasmodically
arched as if it were in shark form. The involuntary movement threw him off
balance. He staggered and dropped to all fours, the tip of his pointed helmet
aimed at the sandy floor.

His eyes blinked as his mind fought off the scent, and thoughts of going mad
dashed around inside his tiny brain until it ached. He was five days’ march from
any sizable body of water. There was no chance of returning to his shark form,
no matter how much he hungered for it. Not in the desert. There was no chance of
any kind of relief, yet his mind had suddenly behaved as if he were once more a
shark, and his senses had smelled blood, even though he knew there was nothing
but the odor of hot dirt on the air.

He listened to his own blood pound the drums of his ears and wanted to
scratch in countless places. Every pore, scale and orifice of his body was being
violated by heat and sand. His only escape was to think of the ocean, of its wet
cold, of its endless liquid-blue space, of the yawning dark green gloom of its
depths and of beautiful brown-skinned girls flailing on the surface in a frenzy
of fear at the sacred feeding times. A euphoria came over him similar to what he
felt when he swam from sea water into fresh water, but then his breath became
short, and he had to stand and pace again.

As he moved back and forth, he put his fingers inside his mouth, felt his new
teeth rising into place and spit out the taste of his own blood. Even it seemed
unusually hot and rancid, and made him thirsty. He went out the back end of the
tent and moved to the water barrels standing in the shade. He picked up a wooden
bucket and dipped it into the water. He drank deep, trying to fill his entire
seven-foot form with one swallow. Suddenly he stopped short. Water splashed
over his chest armor as he looked over the rim of the bucket.

Bars of jagged white light were flashing across the shaded boulders, like
lightning, but there was no lightning in the sky. Another distant, rolling boom
came, again sounding distinctly like thunder. He climbed up through the rocks
until he could see the far hills. Above them was a dark thundercloud, but no
sign of lightning.

Baskt chuckled bitterly, a low harsh grating sound without humor. It was a
rain cloud, but he had no hope of it reaching En Sakalda, no hope in anything,
least of all in his prayers. He would have to be standing in a downpour first.

Shafts of blinding white light suddenly exploded from the water slopping
about the bucket between his hands, and made him blink and stagger. He caught
his balance, and a shuddering blood hunger jerked through him. A primordial urge
so strong his entire body began to bend from within, until he was arched
threateningly around the bucket. He looked down into it, very carefully.

A few remaining scraps of white light shot through the ripples of the shallow
water, then flashed up the wooden sides and were gone.

Baskt shook the bucket, but the remaining water sloshed and slapped around
revealing no light hiding within it. He returned to the barrel, dipped the
bucket into it again, came away with half a bucket of water and looked into it.
All he saw was water and a few dead flies. He lifted the bucket to drink again,
and as it came level with his eyes, white light again exploded from it. He
turned his face away, thinning his eyes, and watched it out of the corners.

The light was not coming from the water. It was ricocheting off of its
surface, coming from someplace behind him.

He turned sharply, tossing the bucket aside, and saw beams of white light
spearing out of the smoke at the center of the camp. It appeared to be coming
from the stack of cages within the smoke.

Baskt entered his tent, snapped his sheathed sword from the floor and strode
out into the sunlight. He moved straight for the light, stepping over bodies,
and through campfires into their smoke, until he faced the stack of cages.

The captive girls were naked except for beads and scraps of cloth.
Dark-skinned desert natives, they were young and uncommonly attractive, but
there was not a redhead among them, and little virtue.

The sharkman, his body snarling at the blood scent filling it, moved in among
the cages, shoving them aside in order to examine each of the girls. Reaching
the opposite side of the stack, he looked back and saw that the light was
slashing across the girls’ frightened faces. But not one of them blinked or
appeared to notice it. They only shivered and wiggled with invitation. He pushed
through the few remaining cages and stood in the open area beyond.

There the light hit him directly in the face, blinding him. He lifted a
forearm, blocking the light, and looked under his hand.

The light was centered in front of a large wagon parked behind a massive
stone auction block. It was moving, swirling dizzily.

He thinned his eyes and saw a girl dancing within the light. She moved like a
firefly, banging a tambourine with childish abandon, kicking and twirling
colorful sashes tied to her wrists and ankles. The light seemed to come from
behind her, but he was uncertain. It was blurred by her flashing arms and legs.

Baskt strode forward and stopped behind a scatter of cages, horses and
benches. Just beyond them were the backs of a small crowd of clapping slavers,
squatting and sitting on the ground below the flat stone. He studied the girl
for a long moment, holding the feeding fury within, until he was certain.

The light was not coming from behind the girl. It moved across the small
stage as she moved, not following her, but with her. And there was only one
answer for this. The white light was pouring forth from her soul, radiating from
her body, shooting forth from the naked portions of her flesh.

The sharkman’s body shook with a searing jolt of electric pain, then the
feeding frenzy balled inside his two bellies like fists, and thrust him forward,
spreading his jaws wide. His human mind was gone. Primordial instinct had taken
control, and he dove forward, vaulting through the air like a great white shark.
He crashed through a cage, dropping his sword, and slammed into a group of
tethered horses, scattering them.

When he got back to his feet, the music had stopped and the slavers had
jumped to their feet, parting in front of him. But the white light still stood
on the auction block. It streaked forth from a small, dark-haired girl with eyes
wide and mouth hanging open. There was the movement of a figure on the roof of
the wagon behind her, but the light made it indistinguishable.

Baskt found his sword and marched for the stage, with the slavers backing
away on all sides.

A crossbow bolt screamed in the air and nailed the sharkman in the left
shoulder, half turning him. But he kept moving. He did not feel that kind of
pain. He never had.

Without looking at it, he ripped the bolt out and tossed it aside with the
plate of living armor that came with it. He leapt onto the stone auction block
facing the girl, and a young man jumped down from the roof of the wagon. He
landed gracefully, and stood between Baskt and the girl with a sword in his
hand. Rage blotted his face, and the light coming from the girl glowed like a
halo around him as he charged.

Baskt caught the young man’s striking blade with his sheathed sword and
turned it. But it came back again, spinning on its own axis with more skill than
the sharkman had expected. He fended it off, then slapped it with the sheath,
and the blade spun out of his attacker’s hand. A scream came from the girl.

Enjoying it now, Baskt stepped in and kicked, driving his foot into the gut
of the slight body. The young man flew backward with a grunting gasp, hit the
girl and drove her back against the wagon. She half screamed, and gasped. His
lithe body tumbled forward, fell to the auction block on its hands and knees.

Baskt kicked the seemingly inert body aside, but as he did, the young man’s
arms took hold of his leg and tried to throw him. Baskt staggered two steps and
drove his fist into the young man’s back. There was a gush of air, another
scream from the girl, and the young man sank facedown. Baskt raised a foot to
crush his head, and the girl leapt on him.

Baskt caught her by the shoulder, shook her until her fight was gone, then
set her down. He kicked the unconscious young man off the block, then sniffed
the girl, making certain that the scent of blood came from her. It was within
the light, just as Tiyy had said it would be.

He laughed insanely, took hold of her by the throat and thigh and held her
high over his head, shaking her whimpering body. “It’s her! It’s her! I’ve found
the bitch!”

Surprised shock, then disappointment creased the slavers’ faces. They drew
together, chattering among themselves with consternation and disbelief.

Baskt howled with delight and dropped the girl back on the block in an
upright position. She staggered under the impact, and he gave her a poke in the
ribs that made her gasp with pain.

“You gave me a lot of trouble, slut,” he said, “and you’re going to pay in
kind for it!”

He poked her again, making her double up and hold her stomach, gasping.
Suddenly she pivoted toward the door of the wagon, and his arm slashed at her,
as fluid as the tail of a shark. The flat of his hand caught her flush on the
side of the head. It was a toying blow. But his blood was up, so it was much
harder than he had anticipated. She flew sideways, hit the auction block with a
pained grunt and rolled off the edge out of sight. All he could see was her
radiating light rising behind the rim of the block. Then she reappeared,
crawling on all fours amid a flurry of white light. She got about five feet,
then collapsed, gasping.

Baskt started toward her, and again thunder rolled through the hot desert
sky. Lightning flashed. He hesitated, his eyes on the dark cloud to the south.
It had passed over the mountains, and its misted edges were reaching for En
Sakalda. More thunder ripped from its dark, heavy body, and lightning cut
through it, striking at the ground. Then the cloud covered the sun, and the
sharkman felt cool relief as a shadow moved over him.

He unconsciously touched the scabbed armor plates at his shoulder, then
strode for the girl, and a darkness blotted out her light. It was made by a man
holding a large axe, a Barbarian wearing nothing more than a loincloth and his
pride. He was nearly as big as Baskt, and it pleased the sharkman almost as much
as the prospect of rain.

The torturous desert had finally provided him with a worthy distraction.