Hero's Horror

Chapter Twenty

At the top of the steps the dreamers halted before Lathi's throne, but while Hero's eyes feasted on the beauty of her face and form, his companion's were busy elsewhere. It was the source of the golden glow in which she bathed which fascinated him. He had known that strange, soft light before-in that secret room in the Keep of die First Ones!

And sure enough, when he stared at its source, he saw that the glow's center was a Wand of Power where its rod had been thrust like a pin into the high back of Lathi's throne. Now only the knob protruded, and it was this which gave off that rare, steady, goiden effulgence.

"Ah!" said Lathi, smiling at the older dreamer, "you have seen Lathi's Light. It is indeed a wondrous light, is it not? Giving no warmth at all, still it burns like molten gold. Yes, and you offer Lathi as a gift this second rod of magic, which burns not." She produced Thinistor's wand and waved it in her tiny hand. "Doubtless it has its use, but I have not discovered it. Perhaps," she turned her eyes upon Hero, "you would care to describe its powers to Lathi, and tell her how it came into your possession?"

Before Hero could answer, Eldin growled, "He would not! And the wand was taken from us, not freely given. Now give it back-" He reached out to snatch the wand from her hand, but before his great fingers could touch it the flat of a scythe struck his skull a resounding thwack from behind. Eldin immediately crumpled and Hero turned in a crouch, his hand instinctively reaching for a sword which no longer was there.

"Cowardly dogs!" he snarled at the two Ter-men, who lifted up their scythes threateningly.

"Hold!" Lathi cried, and they froze. Her face, still regal and beautiful, no longer smiled. 'Take that roaring bull away," she ordered, "and pen him where he will do no mischief. As for you," she gazed at Hero and gradually her smile returned, "you may stay here with me, for now. But understand, neither my Ter-men nor my handmaidens will waver for a single instant if I am threatened. I am their Queen."

Hero stood stilt but raged inwardly as Eidin's unconscious form was lifted up and borne down the steps, across the room and out through the arched, sculpted entrance. "Now then," said Lathi in her sweet, alien dialect, "tell me about yourself. Who you are, what you are, and how you came here. I have been told that you are a complete man .. ." Her eyes settled briefly-somewhat eagerly, Hero thought-on his loincloth, then returned to his face.

"I was born intact, yes," growled Hero. "Certainly I've got more going for me than your poor lads." He looked down upon the handmaidens where they stood in groups or reclined upon the floor and frowned. "Though what good that would do me here is hard to say!"

Lathi saw his meaning and laughed throatily, and so infectious was her laugh that despite himself Hero found his face twitching into a grin. He stared openly at her body. She was naked from the waist up, but from there on down her form was hidden in voluminous frilly folds of soft paper which were spread out over the whole surface of her wide throne. Not even her feet were visible. Hero could not help but wonder if the rest of her figure matched up to her naked half.

"But you must not think," she told him in another moment, bringing his thoughts back to the present, "that all of my Ter-men are impotent. Indeed not!" She clapped tiny, delicate hands and the fine paper curtain to the left of her throne was drawn back. Four huge, naked Ter-men stepped into view, paraded before the throne, bowed low to Lathi and hastily returned whence they had come. The curtain swished shut behind them.

At the sight of the four-who had been built like statues of real heroes, and more so in certain areas-Hero's eyes had widened; but he had noted a furtive, frightened light in their eyes, though certainly they had not been frightened of him. Now that they were gone he forced a couldn't-care-less expression onto his face and waited.

"You are not impressed?" said Lathi presently.

Hero remembered one of Eldin's favorite sayings. "I have a friend in Ulthar with very large ears," he answered. "Unfortunately, he's deaf!"

Lathi's smile grew warm as the heart of a sun. "Ah! You are wise, and among my Ter-men wisdom is so rare as to be extinct. Come, sit beside me," and she patted the frill-covered seat of her great throne.

Deciding to play along with her for the moment, Hero sat. She offered him a hand and he took it, and in no time at all his natural instincts had him stroking her warm, elegant fingers. Lathi sighed and for a moment her eyes became half-closed; but then she petulantly started up. "And still you have not told me of yourself!"

"My name is Hero," he answered. "David Hero." He deepened his voice to what he hoped was a seductive purr. "I'm a man of the waking world-an adventurer in Earth's dreamland-a swordsmaster, keep-climber and wizard-slayer."

"All of these things!" Her eyes opened appreciatively, perhaps a little mockingly, Hero thought. He remembered something Eldin had told the Keeper-how long ago?- and added: "And I'm a half-decent singer, too."

"A singer of songs?" cried Lathi delightedly, and a murmur of anticipation went up from her handmaidens where they now gathered at the foot of the dais. Slowly and deliberately she rubbed her naked shoulder against Hero's where he sat beside her, her great eyes eating him as she gazed into his own. "And will you sing for me, David Hero? And shall we then discuss other ways in which you might serve Lathi of Thalarion?"

Now while Eldin might definitely argue the fact, Hero was no fool, though occasionally he felt like one. He felt like one now, but at the same time he saw at least a means of prolonging his sudden "friendship" with the queen of this hive, and thus maintaining his freedom.

His mind had been working overtime since entering the royal chamber, and many small pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. This was to Hero's liking, for he firmly believed that to find a solution one must first be aware of the problem in its entirety. The longer he remained a free man, the greater his chance of solving the problem, escaping and rescuing Eldin.

"You wish me to sing?" he said, playing for time.

"Indeed," Lathi answered, "for the songs of dreamers are so sad and strange, and we so rarely hear them."

Again he looked round the room, at the Ter-men where they stood among reclining handmaidens, their arms folded but their strange eyes never leaving him for a moment. "Ah! But I'm jealous about who hears my songs," he said on sudden inspiration. "I don't sing them for men, and I certainly won't sing them for half-men!"

For a moment he thought he'd gone too far. Lathi's eyes clouded for a second or so and her handmaidens uttered "oohs" and "aahs" of disappointment. Then Lathi spoke:

"If I send my Ter-men away," she said, "and if you should be so foolish as to do anything-untoward?-the handmaidens would very quickly bind you. And then I would have them fil! you up with their threads until your stomach, throat and mouth were stuffed with them! That would be a very unpleasant death, David Hero."

He gulped and agreed, "Indeed it would!"

"Then we understand one another. Good!" and she clapped her hands.

The Ter-men immediately left the room, going out through the sculpted arch of the great door. And now Hero was alone with Lathi and her-females?

Slowly he began to sing, a lullaby learned in Nir from the matron of a house where once he lodged for two nights. That mother had cared for seven children, singing each and every one of mem to sleep in their turn every night. Thus Hero had heard the song fourteen times; aye, and now he remembered how it had put him to sleep, too!

As he sang, so he turned over in his mind the things he had noticed, things which were odd even for a race of people as strange as this one. For instance: the lack of young Ter-men and maids. There were no children. He had not seen a single child in all of this great hive. Were the Ter-men born full-grown? He doubted it. And then there was Lathi's obvious interest in his manhood, and her hint of a way other than singing in which he might serve her. And what of those prize stallions she had shown him? Were they in reality as useless as geldings?

Still singing, he started as Lathi's head fell softly against his shoulder. It was almost sufficient to bring his song to an abrupt halt, but not quite. Instead, gently turning his head to look at her, he saw that she was fast asleep! Moreover, the handmaidens had all curled up where they lay and were now sleeping. It was unbelievable, more than Hero had dared hope for, and he quickly stifled the whoop of victory he felt welling deep in his lungs. No, for victory was still very far away; but certainly his was a tremendous stroke of luck.

Softly crooning, he eased himself off the throne and peered wildly about for a weapon, preferably one of the sharp scythes used by the Ter-men. In that respect, however, he was out of luck, and so turned his attention to the curtains which flanked Lathi's throne. The four great Ter-men he had seen had not been armed, and so this might be a possible escape route. On the run, there were few in Earth's dreamland could outdistance David Hero.

Gradually he let his song fade into silence, then moved soundlessly to the curtain and drew it open a little way. Holding his breath, he looked into the room beyond. At first he could see very little, for the light beyond the curtain was less bright than that of the throne room. Then-

As his eyes grew accustomed to the blue-glowing gloom, so he saw a pair of naked handmaidens slowly and luxuriously rubbing fragrant oil onto a large cylindrical object whose surface gleamed like old leather. The cylinder seemed to protrude from the wall and was all of ten feet long. Big as a barrel at its thickest part, it tapered to a blunt point like a huge chisel. As Hero watched, the thing seemed to shudder in a sort of ecstasy.

Alive? The cylinder was alive! But what in all the dreamlands was it?

He could see a little better now and so turned hjs attention to the activities of the four Ter-men where they crowded together in one corner. Incredibly, they seemed to be gambling-a peculiar sort of relaxation which Hero would not have expected of their species-and he saw the white flash of dice as they rose in air and fell to the hard-packed paper floor.

Quickly, breathlessly the Ter-men scrutinized the dice where they lay and three of them turned their heads to peer at the fourth. For his part he leapt wildly to his feet. The winner, Hero thought, then rapidly changed his mind as the others rose up and grabbed hold of the fourth before he could flee. They held him down while one of the handmaidens left her work on the cylinder-thing to weave a web of silk over his mouth.

Then the three dragged him to the blunt end of the morbidly heaving cylinder and held him while more threads were used to bind his legs together and his arms to his sides. Trussed up like this, he was unable to get his fingers to the threads and melt them-if his type was equipped for that task.

Now the handmaidens began to stroke and massage the cylinder about one third of its length up from the blunt chisel-point. By this time Hero could see quite clearly and he noted once again the undulant, ecstatic motion of the thing as the handmaidens worked on it. His hand began to tremble a little on the curtain as he tried to fathom the meaning of what he was seeing. Something horrible was happening here-or was about to happen-and it seemed to Hero that he should know what it was. Or that he should flee before he found out what it was ...

Then-

His eyes widened and the hair rose up at the back of his neck as he saw that the cylinder-thing was ... was opening! At the subtle and practiced urging of the naked handmaidens a long slit had appeared in the leathery surface of the vast sausage-shape. And now it seemed to pulse, that gash, and in a monstrous spasm it opened wider still.

Hero found himself shuddering almost uncontrollably as the three Ter-men picked up their former colleague and held him horizontally in the air. Now what in the name of-?

Somehow Hero stifled his gasp of horror as the Ter-men placed the head of their luckless fellow in the pulsing gash and pushed and shoved until he had fully entered the cylinder and only his feet protruded. Those feet twitched, jerked spastically, twitched again, and finally were still. And suddenly the massive cylinder convulsed, contracted, convulsed again in a loathsome rippling of nameless flesh, which tailed off into a sort of near-inert, exhausted palpitation.

The Ter-men waited a moment longer men tugged at the motionless, protruding feet of their ex-comrade and pulled his body-or what was left of it-clear of the gash which now began to close. The body looked like a time-ravaged mummy, shrivelled and bloodless, a dry skin full of dry bones!

And at last Hero knew it all. In his mind he had measured up the thickness of the wall and had positioned the Queen's throne behind it. He need wonder no longer about Lathi's lower body, so carefully hidden from view while her upper torso was so lusciously displayed. No, for this cylinder-thing, this vast leathery trunk, this was the eidolon Lathi's body; and now Hero knew just exactly what she had meant by "another way" in which he might serve her!

The curtain tore in his hand as he stumbled backward away from the entrance to that awful nuptial chamber; but his low moan of uttermost terror was completely drowned out by Lathi's shriek as she was awakened-by her own passion, perhaps?-to discover his deception.

Seeing him where he stood with the torn curtain in his hand at the top of the steps, she began furiously to clap her hands; and in the next moment there sounded a veritable tumult of shouting and rushing feet from beyond the sculpted archway. As if this were not enough there was something else, something which seemed as much a surprise to the denizens of the hive as it was to Hero: a series of massive subterranean thumps that shook the ground as by the tread of some striding giant.

He had little enough time to ponder these tremors, however, but rather worried about more pressing matters. Namely the dozen or so Ter-men who came bursting in through the archway to rush at him up the dais steps!