Vol. I No. 5
The girl hung motionless in her manacles, star-
ing upward at him.
Like a pendulum, Niall swung those chains.
They were dropping him more swiftly now, soon
that gigantic serpent would be able to reach the girl
with its fangs. Whatever he was going to do — he
must do soon!
He heard a link scrape on the stone rim. One
more swing! His muscles bulged in arms and legs
and back as he put all his weight, all his strength,
into his swinging.
Then he leaped. With one hand he held the
chains even as he swung outward toward the pit’s
rim. His warboots landed, scraped. He fell full
length. But his hand still held a link, and the girl fell
beside him onto the cold stones.
She sobbed, she wept with relief.
But they were not yet done with danger. Up-
ward over the pit’s rim came the fanged wedge that
was the serpent’s head. Niall cursed and yanked his
steel free of its scabbard. With Blood-drinker naked
in his hand he leaped to the edge of the pit, swung
the sword.
Steel grated on a serpent’s tooth, snapped it. In-
stantly, even as the head was drawing back, Niall
curved the aim of his blade, cut upward under the
jaw of the massive snake. Through bone and sinew
and flesh went the edge of his blade.
The reptile hissed. That hiss was a sussuration
of rage and fury, of pain and agony. It reverberated
from wall to wall, from the bottom of the pit
upward.
Forward lunged that bleeding head. Outward
swept the forked tongue. The fangs glinted cruelly in
the faint light of the chamber. Niall could see the
brownish scales, which seemed like armor plate, tint-
ed greenish, here and there, as that flat head darted
toward him.
Niall swung Blood-drinker, drove it in an arc of
bluish light straight for that head. Deep into the
skull went the blade, the shock of the blow ran up
Niall’s powerfully muscled arm into his shoulder.
The giant reptile hissed out its pain and an-
guish, its fury.
Bracing his thickly thewed legs, Niall tore the
steel from its living bed. Yet in that moment he felt
hate surge up about him, almost like a scarlet
mantle: not his own hate, but that of another. It was
a human hate, mingled with fear, and it shook him
for a moment as he yanked free his steel and watch-
ed the skull-smitten reptile draw back, sink down-
ward.
He whirled, sword in hand —
— yet there was no one there, only the girl who
crouched naked on the stones of the flooring, half
hiding her face behind a veil of fallen hair. His eyes
went from her to the chamber in which he stood
panting, blood and ichor dripping wetly from his
swordblade to the pavement.
“The wizard,” he muttered. “Who is the wi-
zard behind all this?”
The head of the girl jerked up so that he could
see her eyes through the spill of black hair, vivid and
fearful, tinted a pale yellow.
“Ulkarion,” she whispered, and with her whis-
per a chill came into the air.
“Is that his name? The name of the warlock
who inhabits this ancient pile of stone?”
He knelt beside her, lifting out his dagger and
using it to pick the locks that held the manacles to
her slender wrists. She shuddered away from him
but he smiled at her.
“Na, na. There’s no reason to fear me, I’m just
a traveler on my way to Urgrik. Something bemused
my fellow travelers and —”
“But not you?”
she asked wonderingly.
Niall frowned. “No, and that’s a strange thing.
They all became like the living-dead, but whatever it
was did that to them didn’t affect me at all.”
As the last manacle fell from her ankle, the
woman rose up, proudly naked in the dim light, and
raising her hands, parted her hair so that she could
see him the more clearly. For his part, Niall did his
own staring. She was beautiful, her black hair was
almost like a robe that hid a part of her nakedness
from his eyes, and her yellow eyes softened as they
regarded him. Slowly she shook her head.
“We can never escape Ulkarion, you know,”
she said softly. “He is a very potent wizard, he has
searched for many years for this place.” Her hand
rose, indicated the vast stones of the walls, the viper
pit, the dark entrances that lead into this vast room.
Niall rose to stand beside her. “What can you
know of this mage?”
She shrugged.
“Ulkarion needs sacrifices for
Sisstorississ, the snake-like god who dwells in laby-
rinthine hells far out in space. Long ago, Sisstorississ
was worshipped here in Kor Magnon.” She caught
the bewilderment in his eyes and smiled faintly.
“Kor Magnon is the name of this place where
we stand. Long and long ago, it was the lair of a race
of serpent-men who were worshippers of Sisstoris-
siss. They stole human sacrifices to offer the snake-
god, until the peoples of this region rose up and at-
tacked it.
“Kor Magnon fell, everyone in it was put to
death. From that day on, it has lain empty,
abandoned, until all record of its location was for-
gotten. Yet Ulkarion searched for it, hampered only
by the efforts of another wizard named Iphygia.
Eventually, he defeated Iphygia and came here to
worship Sisstorississ, so that the snake-god would
make him powerful and almighty.”
The girl shrugged. “I was to have been the first
sacrifice to Sisstorississ
— until you came along. I —
am grateful.”
Niall eyed her cautiously. “You know a lot
about this magician.”
“I was hand-maiden to Iphygia. When he de-
stroyed Iphygia, he captured me, Kathyla. I was to
have been his first sacrifice to the snake-god.”
The Far Traveler grinned. “Looks to me as if he
needs a new god. That one who came for you is
dead. I clove in his brain.”
The girl shrugged.
“That was only the manifes-
tation of Sisstorississ. Sisstorississ himself is — be-
yond death. Nothing can kill him.”
“Then we’d better get out of here.”
“It’s no use. There is no escape.”
Niall shrugged.
“Stay here if you want, then.
I’m leaving.”
He moved toward one of the exits, black and
yawning in the stone. Behind him the girl stirred,
called, “Not that way, Traveler! That door leads to
certain death. There is a trap door somewhere ahead
of that walkway. If you put foot on it, the stone slab
would turn and drop you into everlasting fire, into
the very bowels of the planet.”
Nial turned; asked, “Then where?”
She ran ahead on bare feet toward a different
adit. “Our only hope is by this way. It may take us
to safety.”
He moved toward her, his eyes running up and
down her bared legs, her hips, the tilted breasts half-
hidden by her long black hair. “You seem to know a
lot about this place.”
“My mistress — Iphygia — did her own re-
search. She also wanted to find Kor Magnon and set
herself up as priestess to Isstorississ. She failed. Yet I
have talked with her about Kor Magnon and I know
it almost as well as does Ulkarion.”
“Lead on, then.”
He followed her swaying haunches across the
tiles and into a narrow tunnelway. Darkness closed
in around them, for it was black as deepest space
where they walked, and Niall could not even see the
girl ahead of him, nor could he hear the footfalls of
her feet. Yet his animal senses knew she walked
ahead of him, proudly yet warily, and once he felt
the brush of her hand, though only faintly, against
his arm.
“Beware here, Traveler. There are hidden traps
in all these corridors.”
He strode more warily, and after a time the
walkway rose upward at an angle, before it turned
suddenly and he could see the girl now, and also a
round room with two doors at its far side.
She started forward and as she did, out of both
of those entrances came a dozen liches — dead men
clad in scraps of burial garments, wielding in their
skeletoned hands rusted weapons that had been
buried with them long ago — and as they caught
sight of Niall and Kathyla, weird ullulations broke
from their skeletal throats.
The girl shrank back even as Niall leaped for-
ward. Blood-drinker in a hand — not one of these
mummified liches had blood, but that made no dif-
ference — he ran to meet them. They moved slowly,
as though not yet aroused from the sleep of death, as
though they still dreamed in the sepulchers in which
they had been entombed.
Niall swung his sword, he ravened in among
them with his steel always moving, slashing, darting.
He was like an enraged panther in the fury of his
fighting. Skulls rolled, clicking on the tiles, boney
arms dropped where they were severed. In moments,
those skeletal figures flopped and rolled across the
floor, dismembered but still under the spell of some
awful wizardry.
The Far Traveler paused, glancing about him.
With his warbooted foot he kicked away a skull that
sought to bite him, then tromped hard on a boney
hand that still held a sword.
“Come along. There must be a way out of this
hellhole, away from magicks such as this.”
The girl shook her head, smiling faintly. “There
is no escape from Kor Magnon. Nor,” she added
darkly, “from Ulkarion, either.”
“If he’s flesh and blood, he can die.”
Her slanted yellow eyes slid sideways at him,
mockery in their depths. “Do you think you can de-
feat Ulkarion, barbarian?”
He shook his bloody sword at her. “If he’s hu-
man, he can die. If there’s a way, I’ll find it.”
She whispered, “Perhaps you can, at that.”
Her hand lifted, she beckoned to him. “This way,
now. If I remember the old scrolls, there should be
safety down this passageway.”
They stepped over the still flopping forms of the
liches and moved into a narrow tunnel which led up-
ward. Niall still held Blood-drinker in a fist; at any
moment he expected attack. He had no way of
knowing how Ulkarion could trace their movements
in these subterranean tunnels, but apparently he
could. The attack of the liches seemed proof enough
of that.
Upward they walked, with the girl leading the
way. Once she paused, her hand held high. They lis-
tened, but even though they heard only the silence of
these long-unused corridors, Niall tightened the grip
of his hand on his sword-hilt.
He had no knowledge of how long he had been
without sleep, but even his gigantic muscles were
showing the effect of his constant walking, fighting.
His eyes slid sideways at the girl. She had stumbled
once or twice lately, he saw lines of tiredness on her
face.
“We need sleep,” he muttered.
Her eyes were fearful as they turned toward
him. “To sleep in Ulkarion’s lair is to die.”
“And if we don’t sleep, we die from exhaus-
tion.”
She paused, thinking,
“There is a place — may-
hap. It is not far from here, off one of these corri-
dors. There we may sleep a while, reasonably safe.”
Now Kathyla ran ahead, her black hair flying,
and Niall trotted to keep up with her. Along two
ramps they went, and then they came to a room off a
short corridor, a room hung with arrases and
drapes, quiet as a tomb, and almost as dark. Only a
tiny candle which Kathyla found and lighted, en-
abled them to see.
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