PART 2

Ebraim Borak

Chapter Four

Two big men they were that walked their great yaks out of the river mists that night, wandering dreamers long departed the teeming cities of the waking world to seek their fortunes in dreamland's coastal towns and villages. But despite the fact that these were men of the waking world (who have always been, in physical stature, greater than those of dreamland) their bigness lay not alone in powerful muscles and towering frames of flesh. No, for in the years of their companionship they had also acquired a certain stature in the art of thievery.

As to the passage of time:

Since that early morning when, against his will and better judgment, David Hero had descended the seven hundred steps to pass through the Gate of Deeper Slumber-and later to find Eldin where he lodged for a day or two at a village inn-a great many mornings had seemed to pass and time had become a confusion; which is usually the way of it with dreams.

For as any dreamer can testify, dream-time passes very strangely-where entire adventures may take place in a single hour, and an hour itself lengthen to a week-so that a year in dreamland might easily pass between the closing of one's eyes and their opening to a single morning's sun in the waking world. But even so, Eldm and Hero had seemed to wander an inordinately long time; and surely one or the other, or both, ought by now to have returned through the thin veil of sleep to the world of their conscious beings?

They had not done so, however, and since neither one of them could remember the circumstances which had occasioned their meeting in the waking world-or the terrible accident which returned them once again to the dreamland where now they had come together-they had long since given up trying to fathom the riddle of it. They were now, to all intents and purposes, inhabitants of dream; though to dreamland's genuine citizens they would always be "men of the waking world."

And of course they were the two dreamers who came down into Theelys: David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer, grown closer now than brothers and questing after-what? But questing, anyway.

The ferryman who brought them across the mouth of the Tross had known something of them, but had said nothing. And for all that they towered over him, still they had paid for his services and made no trouble for him. Others in dreamland had not been so lucky where these two were concerned, the ferryman knew, but he also knew that their reputation was not a bad one. They were thieves and known for their brawling, true, but they stole only from those whose fortunes were great (and usually ill-gotten) and they brawled with those of their own kind, in which fighting seemed instinct. Outlaws they might be-but not yet outcasts.

In the passing years Eldin had grown somewhat quick to anger, but his loyalty to his companion remained unswervable. Scarfaced, black-browed and gangling like an ape, now he sucked in the river mists and gritted his teeth, straining to control the red coughing that threatened constantly to explode deep in his lungs, a condition that worsened as the seasons waxed and waned.

Hero, on the other hand, had seemed to profit from his long immersion in dream. Tall, rangily muscled, and blond as his waking self-blue of eye and fleet of foot, bursting with easy laughter and, in a tight corner, wizard-master of a flickering snake's tongue in the shape of a curved blade of jungled Kled-he loved songs, a good fight, and sometimes girls. He was younger by a good fifteen years than his companion and clad in brown as compared with the other's night black, but the lands of dream have often known stranger comrades. At least the two were of the same basic mind and shared the same wild wanderlust. Now that wanderlust had brought them south and east, and having crossed the River Tross by ferry, at last they were come down into Theelys.

Of money they had very little-sufficient only for a day or two's bed and board, and perhaps a little extra for a wineskin or so if they carefully avoided the gaminghouses-so that they were sharp-eyed and eager for easy pickings. Thus, in the Street of Rats, at that hour when torches are lit against the dark mists of the Tross, they stabled their yaks and put up at the tavern of Hymat Zorathin. There they tossed their few belongings into a tiny room with a pair of even tinier bunks before elbowing their way into the aleroom and securing a corner table. With their backs safely to the baked brick wall and a wineskin between them-in the warm, noisy, smoky atmosphere of the low-ceilinged tavern-they felt at ease and began to cast about with practiced eyes to see what they might see.

And they were not the only ones in Hymat Zorathin's house with hard bright eyes that night. No, indeed; for in the shadows across the room, where the red and yellow flickering of the torches barely reached, a hooded figure stood silently apart from the tavern's boozier customers and regarded the newcomers thoughtfully through orbs that were sly beneath high-pointed brows.

This was Ebraim Borak, outcast of the Ossaran Steppes many hundreds of miles to the east, a man who employed his keen wits and skeptic's knowledge of human nature to live a life of comparative luxury. In the waking world he had been an arms manufacturer, asleep and dreaming when a barrel of his own explosive had stranded him forever in the dreamlands.

His house was in a lordly quarter of the city, wherein he kept a handful of beautiful black slavegirls of Parg and a eunuch manservant or two, but his presence in this lowly tavern was not unusual. Often in such places he found men and women whose various talents were suited to his own equally varied needs. And his interest in the two dreamers sprang chiefly from the fact that he recognized their hooded, hungry peering, knew their precarious position, their almost penniless condition .. . which in turn ought to make them ideal tools for a certain scheme of his.

Some years ago the wizard Nyrass of Theelys, whose walled and high-turreted castle loomed on the outskirts of the city, had promised Borak great riches, wealth almost beyond reckoning, if he could only devise a means of stealing (the wizards had called it "acquiring") a certain magical wand. This wand was a prized possession of an ancient and extremely wicked priest of the dark "God" Yibb-Tstll, who tended his duties at the feet of the monstrous stone idol of that god in a dark temple high in the Great Bleak Mountains (which range of mountains certain authorities believe to be the foothills of that ultimate plateau, Kadath in the Cold Waste).

The wizard Nyrass, a good man despite his various thaumaturgies and magical machinations, had openly warned Borak that the dangers attendant upon any attempted larceny of the wand would be great indeed. To begin with, Yibb-Tstll's priest was a worshipper of the terrible demon gods who seeped down with Cthulhu from the stars when the Earth was an inchoate infant and dreamland still undreamed. And he was rumored to wield weird powers, for through the wand he controlled an alien energy which could shrivel men to bones like the blast of a mighty furnace or the heat in the heart of a rumbling volcano.

And then there was the stone idol, which, if the right runes were invoked and certain other sigils applied, could take on a semblance of life and walk abroad even as Yibb-Tstll himself. And Yibb-Tstll was grim indeed, tainted with all the vile lusts of the terrible demon gods, of which he was one. Against dangers such as these the dizzy mountains and the often perpendicular climbs necessary to reach the temple of the god were as nothing, neither those nor the snow-leopards or even the night-gaunts which were believed to inhabit the caves of the upper crags.

And so Ebraim Borak knew that the road to Yibb-Tstll's dark temple was fraught with danger, and the stealing of his priest's wand even more so, for which reasons (and for one other) he was not greatly surprised that of the wanderers he had sent to steal and bring back the wand-eight men so far; a group of four, a pair, and two other lone adventurers-no single word had since been heard.

Doubtless they had followed the Tross to its source somewhere in the mountainous heights, where the massively monolithic Keeps of the First Ones were known to stand featureless and fearsome, vast blocks of stone as high as the hills, pitted by centuries of rain and ice and lightnings. Eight prospective pillagers, aye-but not a man of them had ever returned! Borak knew why this was so; indeed, he knew much more than the good wizard Nyrass suspected.

For unbeknown to Nyrass, Borak had found a way to contact the wizard-priest of the mountains, discovering him to be a cousin of Nyrass, one Thinistor Udd. Udd in turn had engaged Borak's services, offering him two thousand tonds for each man he could send him; but he must never send more than four at any one time. Borak did not question the sinister wizard's requirements; his greed put aside all need for questions and there was no such thing as "ethics" in his business. Since Nyrass also paid Borak's "expenses," and since no one ever returned from his fool's errand to claim the reward, the Ossaran was in an enviable position-for a man without scruples. And if ever some fool should win Thinistor Udd's wand: well, he could always be disposed of, and then Borak would lay claim to the aforementioned riches promised him by the wizard Nyrass.

Thus was Ebraim Borak a web for the spider Thinistor Udd, and the poor fools who fell in with his plans mere flies for that Wizard's larder. And now, here, if he gauged his men aright, benevolent fates had sent him two more adventurous souls whose paths he could doubtless turn to the north. A few pieces of gold and a promise or two ... there were those in certain quarters of Theelys would gut their grandmothers for a half-tond. Such men were not, however, suited to the Ossaran's needs. These wanderers from the waking world, on the other hand ...

"That man," Eldin softly growled, almost imperceptibly nodding in the direction of a staggering, drunken Kledan slaver whose brawny black arms were banded with gold, "ought not to go home alone. Why, in his condition and with the mist so thick outside, almost anything might befall him on his way back to the black quarter. Eh?" He took his eyes from the lurching, ale-slopping KJedan, indelicately squirted a burst of wine into his mouth, and laughingly slapped his younger companion on the back, as if he had just told some remarkably good joke.

David Hero grinned back at his friend, shook a long yellow lock of hair out of wide blue eyes, and answered: "Aye, there are many dark alleys between him and his bed. Some high-spirited lad might easily bump into him in the dark and inadvertently knock him off his feet. It would be the ruin of those baggy silk pants ..."

The Kledan swayed wildly and half fell, then somehow managed to straighten up. He headed unevenly for the exit, eyes glazed, arms adangle, pushing smaller men out of his way as he went. When his head struck against an especially low beam he reeled and cursed aloud in guttural jungle-born accents, finally teetering through a hanging curtain of beads into the narrow passage that led out onto the Street of Rats.

Eldin was halfway to his feet when a well-manicured but firm hand fell upon his shoulder, pushing him back. Unseen in the momentary diversion caused by the Kledan's ungainly exit, Ebraim Borak had made his way over to the dreamers. Now he loomed over them, too tall for a man born of the dreamlands but proud-featured as the race which had first adopted him.

"Easy, my friend," Borak murmured, smiling from beneath the hood of his rich red robe. 'There are easier ways to make a living, I assure you-and anyway, the foggy air will quickly sober him up. You'd not get away with it, for they'd notice you leaving hot on his trail. The jails of the city are full of would-be pickpockets, sharpers and cutthroats." He seated himself easily between the dreamers and clapped his hands, ordering a skin of the tavern's finest wine.

"We wouldn't have cut his throat," Hero protested in lowered tones. "Merely tapped him on the head, that's all."

"Aye," Eldin agreed, "and in the morning he'd surely thank us for a good night's sleep-and anyway, those golden bangles of his must weigh a ton. They're like to break the poor fellow's arms!"

"Then you admit you were up to no good?"

"Little point in denying it," answered Eldin, stifling a painful cough, "since you've obviously traveled that road yourself. And would you tell on us?"

"Not I," answered the Ossaran, holding up his hands in denial. "Indeed, and as you correctly deduce, if times were harder-and they often have been-I might myself entertain just such wild designs. No, I'm here to make you an offer, not to deliver you into the hands of the city's jailers. Besides, I've little enough time for the law. My own reputation reaches far back into the past and is less than ... spotless? And that, gentlemen," he hurriedly went on, "is not meant as a slur on your own characters, I assure you."

"In which case," rumbled Eldin bringing into view from beneath the table a curving dagger whose blade reflected the poor light glintingly, "there's no requirement for this!" He slipped the weapon into its scabbard at his belt.

Borak's eye narrowed beneath the hood of his cloak in grudging, wary admiration as he gazed at the burly dreamer. "Well then," he eventually continued, "before we get down to business: how are you named, you two, and what's your trade?-other than rolling drunks, that is."

"Rolling drunks is part of it," Hero nodded, frowning. "When you have nothing and you've reached nowhere you start again-at the bottom. At the moment we're thieves, that's all."

His larger companion grunted in agreement. "There's more money in thieving than trading in dreamland's wares," he said, "and the work is easier-until you're caught. We haven't been caught yet, and we don't intend to be. As for our names: this is David Hero and I'm Eldin the Wanderer, and we've roved and robbed half across dreamland, always in search of-"

"In search of?" Borak prompted him. "Of what? Wealth, a good woman, a place to settle, adventure, life ... death?"

"All of those things," Eldin snarled, suddenly impatient and curiously peeved by Borak's questioning. "What more is there?" He coughed again, an expression of pain momentarily twisting his already unlovely features.

Borak shrugged, then answered shrewdly: "What more? An easy life-while you still have one to live!" He turned to Hero. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"Easy living would be nice I suppose, for a while," came the answer. "But there's more, there must be. More than wealth and property, more than a pretty girl and a warm hearth to park your boots on. Adventure?-maybe that's it. There's always a hill behind the next one, always an uncharted island somewhere, a scent you never smelled before, a taste you never tasted ..."

Borak lifted an eyebrow in surprise. "Are you a poet then, dreamer, as well as a thief?" He turned his gaze once more upon the heavier man. "And yet your friend here seems just the opposite. You make a strange pair."

"I'm a bit of a poet, that's true," agreed Hero, "but don't misjudge Eldin. His nature was once pretty much like mine. Now-" he shrugged. "Don't they say that opposites attract? Anyway, we understand each other-and we'd understand you better, too, if you'd only get to the point."

"Aye," the Ossaran agreed, "enough useless chattering." He stirred himself, took out a leather pouch, emptied its contents carefully onto the table. One hundred triangular tonds, the principal coinage of the southeast, lay golden and gleaming in the tavern's smoky light. Silence fell over the room in an instant and every eye glitteringly reflected the gold.

Softly humming an olden tune of the steppes to himself, Borak deliberately divided the heap into two equal piles, one for David Hero and the other for Eldin the Wanderer. The hand of the older dreamer was touching his pile when the younger's trapped his wrist. Their bright eyes met across the table questioningly, then turned to stare at Ebraim Borak.

"We could live like kings for a three-month!" Hero murmured. "But what do you want of us for your money?"

"He wants someone murdered," Eldin granted. "Isn't it obvious?"

Ebraim Borak shook his head and smiled. "No, I'm not hiring assassins," he assured them. "Not tonight. If murder was what I wanted I could get it cheaper than this, I promise you. All I want is your attention, to know that you'll hear me out. The money is payment in advance for that alone. Then, if I can interest you in my proposition-" he formed his next words carefully in a voice little louder than a whisper: "Five hundred tonds each as a retainer- ten thousand when the job is done!"

'Ten thousand tonds," Hero whistled softly. "That's five thousand each!"

"No, no, my young friend," Borak quickly corrected him. "You misunderstand me. I meant ten thousand ... eachl"

After a period of stunned silence, Eldin grunted and scooped up his pile of money. "Oh, we'll listen," he nodded his head emphatically. "You may be sure of that!"

"Aye," agreed the younger man, letting his pile of tonds lie. "But listening is a thirsty game, eh? So-taverner!" he called out. "Another skin, if you please. No, better make it three-and some meat to soak it up!"