The Quest of Kadji Read online

  One caught him in the shoulder, half spinning him around. The other caught him full in the face.

  Kadji slipped in the loose sand, trying to hold onto the reins of the bucking, kicking horse, and fell to his knees. Off balance, Zamog swung wildly but the scimitar whistled past Kadji and spun itself from the Dragonman’s nerveless grip. The sledgehammer blow of the horse’s hoof had broken his shoulder, and he would fight with that scimitar no more.

  Kadji tore the cloth from his face and ripped the sacred Axe from the bosom of his robes and sprang at the staggering figure of Zamog, looming like some shambling demon of the storm amidst the flying murk.

  But Haral’s thundering hooves had won the fight. The second blow had taken the hapless monsterling full in the face. The force of a battering ram was behind that iron-shod hoof. The skull of a human being would have splattered like a broken egg shell before so terrific a blow. The tougher and heavier bone of the Dragonman’s skull had held—but just barely.

  Zamog lifted a mask of streaming horror to face the attack of the Nomad youth.

  Both eyes were gone, smeared to liquescent ruin. The lower jaw was broken and hung and waggled helplessly, baring glistening and terrible fangs that could have torn Kadji’s flesh to scarlet ruin if they could have closed on him. But they would never close again.

  It was a marvel that the Dragonman lived. In fact, it was a miracle that he was still on his feet. Staggering, blinded, one arm hanging like a dead weight from the shattered shoulder, the blue-scaled monsterling yet groped for the boy warrior with his single hand. Even then, had that hand closed on Kadji, such was the strength in that one good arm that it could have crushed the Red Hawk of the Chayyim Kozanga to mangled death.

  But it did not.

  The Axe of Thom-Ra lifted, glittering in the wan light of the dying sun star, and came flashing down.

  The first stroke took Zamog full in the chest with a heavy thunk like a forester chopping wood. The glittering blade sank two inches into the tough, blue-scaled flesh: a rib or two cracked; Zamog staggered back, retaining his balance with some difficulty.

  The second axe-blow took the Dragonman full on the side of the neck, half shearing off his head, and severing the spinal cord. It was a terrible wound: oily, malodorous serpent-gore pumped in a thick, gluey rope from a cut artery, slithering down his massive body to stain and besplatter the sands underfoot.

  Zamog fell, slowly, in sections, like a tower whose foundations have eroded away. He went to his knees, then to all fours, then be sprawled at full length in the shifting sands. His broad, flat-tipped tall slapped the sand a time, then twitched spasmodically. And he died there in the cold grey sands at the World’s Edge.

  The sandstorm ended shortly thereafter, and the two mounted and rode forward again—due east.

  vi. Before the Purple Gates

  THYRA AWOKE slowly, as though from the spell of an interminable dream. For a long moment she merely lay there on the hard flat rock, half-wrapped in a torn cloak, blinking sleepily around her.

  The towers of Ithombar, king city of the Immortals, rose directly before her. To incredible heights they soared, those slender, lofty spires. All of sparkling purple crystal were they built, and after a fashion unknown to mortal masons, for neither of block nor of brick were they composed, but of one fantastic mass of glittering glassy stuff, without seam or jointure. The imagination trembled and veered giddily away from picturing the furnaces in which those thousand-foot towers had been cast … all in one piece.

  Directly before her rose the gates of the undying city wherein resided beyond death the mightiest and holiest of seers and saints, poets and philosophers—the great names and minds and hearts of this world of Gulzund, who had won their way to this place of perfect and unchanging peace one by one, over innumerable ages.

  She stared at the mighty portals unbelievingly. Then, almost, she could have laughed. Poor Shamad! The last dream of conquest and empire was beyond even his lust to realize!

  For the gates were … locked.

  The rasp of boot-leather on dry gritty stone stung her to attentiveness. She turned her head around and froze, like one who wakes to find a deadly viper coiled within striking range.

  She turned and saw Shamad the Impostor seated on a flat boulder not ten strides away. He squatted, tailor fashion, and his strong, white hands played restlessly with a slender sharp knife. He was watching her, a faint smile on his face.

  And suddenly she was very afraid.

  Perhaps because fear took hold of her soul so completely, she stared at him, taking in very detail of his appearance. His raiment, once rich and kingly, was worn and stained and frayed to rags. The flesh had fallen from his powerful frame, leaving it mere bone and sinew and sun-dried flesh.

  He was in need of a shave, his hollow, sunken cheeks shadowed by a growth of heavy stubble. His lips, which moved continuously, as if he whispered to someone she could not see, were colorless, dry and cracked. Small beads of foamy spittle glistened at the corners of his mouth.

  His eyes burned feverishly in hollowed sockets, ringed with unhealthy circles. He looked ill; ill unto death.

  His bright gaze shifted from her breasts to her face when he noticed that she was looking at him. He grinned, a rictus devoid of mirth, and spread lean hands in a gesture of self-mockery.

  “Welcome to my throne room!” he said, laughingly. “My empire is somewhat smaller than it has been, and my court reduced in numbers to just you and me. Zamog”—he twitched his bony shoulders, and snatched a quick glance behind him—“has gone to slay the boy, your lover; but that was hours and hours ago; I fear even my loyal monsterling has left my service, like all the rest. Faithless, faithless! But I still have you,” he said, his eyes returning to the girl suddenly.

  Thyra was very afraid now. Her heart labored behind her ribs and her throat felt dry as dust. She sought to speak and coughed painfully.

  “I have set wine beside you: drink, drink,” he said tonelessly.

  She drew one weak hand from under the cloak, found a cup, and drank deeply of the lukewarm, strong red wine. Eyes hooded, the Impostor watched her broodingly, slapping his dagger nervously against the rock with little dull ringing sounds.

  Putting down the empty cup, she looked away from the ghastly expression on his face and stared up at the walls and gates of the silent, mysterious city. He followed the direction of her gaze, and his face contorted in a snarl.

  “Locked, locked, locked, locked,” be said harshly, then laughed, gesturing. “There is nowhere left for me to run!”

  She followed his gesture and looked suddenly for the first time at the World’s Edge.

  As far as the eye could see in the harsh morning glare, a cliff of stone ran from horizon to horizon, cutting the sky in half. The desert waste simply stretched up to a point about thirty yards from where they were—and stopped. Beyond it there was only empty sky, blue, vacant, birdless. Not even a cloud was there to stain the purity of the azure infinity.

  It was apalling. It was too vast to endure. The mind flinched away from it numbly, refusing to think of it. She averted her eyes from the terrific immensity—and found him staring at her.

  “I understand why the boy, your lover, has followed me all this weary way …”

  “He is not my lover! He has never touched me! I am a Virgin of Zoromesh and my Vows forbid me to—” she said hotly; he waved her words away with the hand that held the sharp knife.

  “Words, words! You love him, do you not? And he, you?”

  “Yes, I love Kadji, with all my heart and soul,” she said a trifle unsteadily. “As for him, 1 cannot say—never has he given me a look, a word—”

  “Phaugh! You are children, children! He is sworn to a Quest of vengeance, to revenge the honor of his tribe—of course he is forbidden to the love of women, he cannot even speak a word of love, any more than can you!” Shamad said restlessly.

  Breathlessly, Thyra looked at the madman with wide astonished eyes. Could it be so
? Could that be why Kadji had seemed to rebuff her timid overtures back there in the cave months ago? It must be—what fools they both had been! Each sworn to chastity of body and of speech, by almost identical vows—and each not understanding the other was similarly bound!

  “… but why have you pursued me, girl? That is the one thing I have never understood. I have never harmed you,” he said, almost plaintively. She steeled herself and looked him directly in the face: she was weak from endless hours of riding, so weak and exhausted she had swooned in the saddle; he could strike before she could untangle her limbs from the torn cloak and rise; but she spoke anyway. Let it end here, she thought.

  “Have you forgotten how you dispatched your assassins to slay me—me, a Blood Princess of the House of Holy Azakour?”

  He chewed on his lips thoughtfully, gazing at her with eyes a little sideways, eyes terribly bloodshot and weary.

  “There is that, I suppose,” he mumbled.

  “But the real reason is that the sisterhood to which I belong has sent me hither to destroy you,” she said, trying not to let her voice tremble. “For I am of the White Witches of Zoromesh, not yet a full sorceress, merely a girl of the novitiate; my mother pledged me to the sisterhood when I was but a child, and the Elder Sisters cared for me and sheltered me after she died.”

  A spark of interest flashed in his eyes.

  “The White Witches? What have I ever dose to offend them?’ he cried, somewhat surprised by this revelation.

  “You offend this earth of Gulzund by merely existing upon it,” she said stoutly, drawing strength and courage from some unknown source within. “Your vile usurpation of the Holy Name and Throne of Yakthodah reeks to heaven and is an affront to the very Gods. They will not tolerate that one of baseborn blood besoil the Holy Dragon Throne! Thus was I sent to slay you if I could; if I could not, another would have followed me, and another …”

  Suddenly Shamad leaped to his feet and sprang down from the flat-topped boulder and stalked over to her. His face was white and twitching as if something in her words had goaded him beyond all endurance.

  “Then they had best unleash another witch on my track,” he snarled. “For I shall slay you, aye, and that beardless boy that follows, and the old man, and that traitor Zamog, too, if still he lurks about—and then myself, I suppose.”

  Without another word he stooped and the sharp dagger blade flashed like a steel mirror in the fierce sun as he drove it at her breast—

  vii. World’s End

  OUT OF NOWHERE a great grey wolf appeared. A shaggy, shadowy wolf, gigantic, fangs bared, growling thunderously. In his lean-muzzled face, eyes blazed like discs of golden flame.

  He gathered himself, haunches tensing hackles rising into a rough crest down his spine. Claws scratched and scrabbled on the naked rock as he seized a purchase and in the next instant launched himself into space like a grey thunderbolt.

  Shamad had frozen in astonishment at the sudden appearance of the monstrous wolf. It was as if he had solidified out of blank nothingness like an apparition. So startled was he that he had involuntarily checked his knife blow and the blade’s wicked point hovered above the flamehaired girl’s breast.

  Then the mighty wolf hurtled through the air and crashed into the stooping figure of the crazed Impostor. Fearsomely long, sharp fangs caught at the wrist of his knife hand; jaws crunched—bones snapped—blood spurted. Shamad shrieked, high and shrill like a child, as the jaws of the savage wolf closed on his hand.

  The impact of the wolf’s leap knocked the man flying. He fell on his back to the naked rock, the dagger spinning away to tinkle against stone.

  The man shrieked again as he feebly tried to keep the snarling, snapping fangs from his face. The fetid, panting breath of the giant wolf was acrid and burningly hot on his face. In seconds his face and throat were slashed to ribbons and streaming with gore. He raised a face like a horrible scarlet mask, wherein only the mad, glaring eyes were still recognizable, in one heart rending glance at the frozen girl.

  Then out of nowhere Kadji came, blocking out the sun, darkening the sky, face grim as vengeance itself.

  In two great strides he was upon the struggling tangle of man and wolf. He bent, locked strong brown fingers in the ruff of fur at the wolf’s shoulder and tore him away from the bubbling, shrieking thing.

  The Axe of Thom-Ra lifted once, catching the sun, then fell in a mighty whistling stroke. The keen steel rasped and rang against naked rock. Blood squirted, startlingly scarlet, unbelievably beautiful pure color, in the sun.

  And the severed head of Shamad rolled across the rocky floor to thud like an immense, soft, obscene fruit against the locked gates of the purple city.

  Thus was the honor of the Chayyim Kozanga Nomads revenged.

  Where all had been noise and motion and horror, now was a space of stillness. His battle fury calmed, the great wolf, Bazan, came padding over to where Thyra half lay, half crouched. The grey wolf whined deep in his throat and his long pink tongue came out to lick her cheek and the shaggy plume of his tail wagged furiously, for all the world like a great dog’s.

  “Well, that’s done, bless us all!” sighed Old Akthoob from somewhere in the background. Thyra laughed weakly.

  Kadji bent and tore the throat of the corpse’s garments open. The great gold medallion of the Dragon City lay against the naked breast of the headless thing. Thyra could have sworn the false corpse of the Emperor, which Shamad had left behind in the Khalidür in his place while he fled in secret, hoping thus to delay pursuit, had worn the sacred emblem. But that must have been a forgery; Shamad could not bear to leave the ancient medallion of the Dragon behind and had worn it all this while.

  Kadji removed the holy, precious thing and placed it within a deep pocket of his tunic. Then he bent and scrubbed clean the blade of the Axe of Thoma-Ra in the dry sand at the base of the flat boulder on which only a few minutes before the Impostor had squatted. Then he kissed the Axe which the War Prince of the Gods had given into the hands of his first ancestor many ages ago, and replaced the sacred weapon in his girdle.

  Then while Thyra watched, he took up the headless corpse and bore it to the World’s Edge. At his curt command, the old Easterling wizard gingerly took up the gory head of Shamad, holding it by a lock of hair, and carried it over to where Kadji stood on the brink of the Infinite.

  The boy warrior raised the corpse above his head and then hurled it over the Edge of the World, even as old Akthoob, with a prim little expression of distaste, hurled the head after it. Over the World’s Edge they fell, head and body, body and head, to fall forever and forever in the mocking gaze of the cold and watching stars.

  Then the Nomad youth came over to where Thyra knelt and raised her in his strong arms. His handsome face, sunburnt, lean-jawed, serious, was very close to her own.

  “How long were you there behind us?” she asked faintly.

  “Long enough to hear that you loved me,” he said. “Long enough to learn that you were bound by the same vows of chastity that sealed my lips against any expression of love. What fools we were, girl!”

  “I have fulfilled my mission,” she said dreamily. “Shamad is dead and the Gods are well pleased; the world is rid of him, and the Elder Sisters will be happy. I shall renounce my Vows; I have taken only the first of the Vows, the very little and unimportant Vows. Now I can speak of love: I love you, Kadji. Kadji!”

  His eyes, clear, fearless, hawk-bright, stared into her own.

  In a low voice he said: “And my Quest is done; the Axe of Thom-Ra has drunk deep of the blood of Shamad the Impostor, and the honor of my people is avenged! Thus have I fulfilled my own vow, and am released of its strictures. And now I, too, can speak of love. I love you, Thyra; I have loved you from the first moment I saw you there in the streets of Nabdoor-town, dressed in the gaudy finery of a Perushka wench. I have never loved any girl but you!”

  The boy’s arms tightened around her and they kissed, a long, deep, endless kiss. At last
they drew apart a little, and the girl lay her head on the boy’s shoulder and sighed a little, and laughed a little.

  “What a strange place for us to meet, and to love at last,” she said huskily. “Have lovers ever exchanged their vows here at the World’s End?”

  He smiled but did not answer, being content merely to stand and hold her close.

  Behind them old Akthoob watched with twinkling eyes, a fond expression on his bony features.

  “Ah!” he coughed, “ ‘Twas World’s End for the false Shamad! For you twain, this humble person suggests it is not World’s End but World’s Beginning …”

  The Epilogue

  AFTER WORLD’S END

  GOLDEN SUMMER had come back to the world of Gulzund again, and Kylix the sun star rode high in the son of her warm rays.

  In the land of Maroosh, amidst the black mountains, where Chaya the Sacred River flows broad and strong from her secret source through the green and fertile valleys that lie forever locked away behind grim and impassive walls of unbroken stone, peace and plenty lay to every land.

  The swordbrothers of the Chayyim Kozanga Nomads rested in the warmth, their wounds now healed, their decimated ranks replenished. Children ran and played along the curve of the great, slow-sweeping river; young lovers trysted in the reedy shallows where the heavy boughs of fruited iongua trees sheltered their whisperings and their doings from the eyes of the villagers; strong young warriors, stripped bare save for a rag twisted about their loins, stood thigh-deep in the clear waters, scrubbing down their stallions. Beyond the river, above the green meadow, where the cozy thatch-roofed huts nestled together in the flanks of the mountain wall, women ground corn in stone bowls, exchanged gossip as they scrubbed out their washing, or rested in the shadow of great trees while the noonday meal hissed deliciously over open-hearth. Fires.

  In the stone-paved square before the House of the jemadar, Zarouk, Lord Chieftain of the Kozanga clans, stretched out his long legs and leaned back in the carven chair of ancient wood. About him a circle of fierce-eyed elders, hawk-nosed and white-bearded, disputed a troublous point of tradition. As for the tall chieftain, his wound now long-since healed, his strength long-since returned, he blinked and closed his eyes sleepily against the weight of golden sun and wished the hour of the midday feast had come.