He became conscious that a hand was shaking his shoulder and he opened his eyes to see old Temujin peering down with a smile and to hear him say:
“Wake up, lad. We’re here! Pelizon is in the scopes.”
13. ZARLAK STRIKES
In a dark cavernous room far underground, lit by the cold flare of permabulbs, a gaunt man sat alone at a huge table of dark wood.
He was robed in dark glittering stuff. Black silks rustled crisply to every motion as he turned the leaves of the ancient book that lay before him on the table. Sequins of jewelled light winked and flashed as he turned the pages; they were sewn along the folds of the voluminous robes that cloaked him from men’s eyes.
His face was an oval of darkness beneath the enshadowing cowl of his robe. Only his eyes could be seen. They were grey and cold as ice, but fierce as flame. As he hovered immobile over a rune-scrawled page of the old manuscript book, only his eyes seemed to live. They burned and seethed with restless energy. A cold, subhuman cruelty was in their icy glare, and the hot banked fires of unholy and unscrupulous ambition.
The book over which the robed and masked figure bent so intently was old. A thousand centuries has passed since alien hands had inscribed those sheets of wrinkled yellowing leather with uncouth hieroglyphics. The book that lay before him on the mighty table was older than recorded human history. The river clay whereof men were someday to fashion bricks wherewith to raise the walls of Ur of the Chaldees was still fresh and wet when these crumbling pages were inscribed. The stones of Cheop’s pyramid still slept amid unbroken hills along the Valley of the Nile. The titanic glittering wall of ice that came grinding down across the world out of the ultimate and boreal north had but recently withdrawn into its fastnesses. Man was young, scarce more than a beast that had learned to stand erect and toy with tools. An aura of almost palpable age hung about the old book; it was impregnated with the dust of a hundred thousand years of slow time.
Whatever the veiled man had hoped to find in the ancient codex eluded him. With a bitter curse he closed the book and shoved it from him, and sat back in his great throne-like chair, brooding, eyes of cold fury inscrutable as they stared hungrily into the cavernous gloom of the subterranean chamber.
A sound behind him. The clink of steel on steel. A dark curtain was drawn to one side by a gnarled and claw-like hand. The black mouth of a tunnel was thus exposed, behind the hangings. From the entrance came forth into view a small, dwarfed figure clad in weird armor of steel. Fantastical in design, the armor was scrawled over with writhing dragons and snarling devil-heads. The dwarf was clad entirely in steel, save for his gnarled and twisted hands and his sallow, frog-like face.
He was incredibly ugly. His mouth was a broad lipless gash and his three eyes were glowing slits filled with evil malignant glitter. His skull-like head was devoid of hirsute adornment.
“Master!” he croaked. The robed figure turned to regard him.
“Speak!” the robed one commanded harshly.
“We have lost contact with Pangoy,” the Death Dwarf said. “His receptors went dead in the third quarter of the Hour of the Toad.”
“Death, or unconsciousness?” the Veiled One demanded.
“Death.”
The word echoed in the silence, fading away into dim whispers. The robed man with the black-masked face regarded the dwarf steadily, with eyes of cold grey flame. Zarlak, the Master of the Death Dwarves and Lord of Pelizon was filled with the bitterness of failure. The age-old book he had searched through fruitlessly and had just shaved aside had been his last hope. Ever since coming to this wilderness world, the Veiled One had striven for one purpose: to find the secret of the Iron Tower. He had searched the crumbling archives of the death cult, but in vain. Old rumors and whispers he had tracked down, but for naught. Now he sought in the ancient Books of Power for the key that would unlock the charmed and demon-guarded gates of the Iron Tower, and the Books had failed him.
The failure of his connection with Pangoy on Zangrimar was yet another disappointment. His mask hid the expression of rage and frustrate fury that writhed and snarled across his face. But his eyes blazed with unholy wrath and cruelty. The Dwarf was forced to turn his eyes away with a little shudder; the flaming fury in Zarlak’s gaze was beyond his endurance.
“Give me the tapes!” Zarlak said. Silently, the Dwarf handed his master a tangle of grey plastic ribbon, whereon black wavering lines were drawn. Zarlak slid them through his black-gloved fingers, studying them.
“The last recordings show that he surprised a slave girl in his quarters. As he was questioning her, the Earthling awoke and they fought. The Earthling, Kirin, seems to have slain Pangoy…”
“I can read the telemetry, fool,” Zarlak grated. He threw the tapes from him with a soundless snarl. Pangoy had been invaluable. The Nexian had never known that telepathic receptors had been surgically implanted in his brain-tissue before he had ever reached the planet Zangrimar. The Mind Wizard never knew he was an involuntary spy for Zarlak, Lord of Pelizon. Now his involuntary servitude was ended, and still Zarlak did not have the secret of the Iron Tower.
The Dwarf, Vulkaar, edged nearer.
“What now, Lord?” he whispered. The cold glare of Zarlak brooded on the gloom.
“Now the Earthling will come here, of course,” he said. “If he is able to escape the clutches of the Witch Queen alive, and gain his ship.”
“Will he be able to do so? The Witch is powerful…” the Dwarf, Vulkaar, said dubiously.
“So was Pangoy,” said Zarlak. “His mastery of the mental forces was extraordinary—which is why the Mind Wizards of Nex dispatched him to Zangrimar in the first place. Only one with his power could destroy Azeera before she plunged half a galaxy in war.” An invisible smile crawled across the masked lips of Zarlak. “The fool succumbed to her wiles despite his powers. He fell hopelessly in love with the Witch Queen… and she accepted him into her service, knowing what a weapon his mental powers would be. She never knew, nor did he, that his own brain broadcast to my receptors everything he saw or heard.”
Vulkaar cackled a peal of gloating laughter.
“That love was your doing, Master!”
“Yes.” Zarlak smiled. “It was a master-stroke. I was a novice in the Mind Schools of Nex in those days… when I learned Pangoy had been selected for the mission, I lured him to my cell and implanted the telepathic receptors within his brain. And hypnotized him so that he would lust for the Witch and fall under her spell. I took a chance, hoping that Azeera was still enough of a woman to be flattered by his adoration and accept his service, rather than having him slain. All went well, but now the Earthling has somehow overcome even a Mind Wizard…”
“Then you think this Kirin will escape from Zangrimar?” Vulkaar asked. The Master nodded.
“If he was strong enough to destroy the Nexian, he has a chance of eluding the grasp of the Witch Queen. And if he does, he will doubtless come to Pelizon.”
The sallow Dwarf in the fantastic steel armor mused thoughtfully on this. The Death Dwarves of Pelizon guarded the Iron Tower with an age-old fanaticism; no intruder could be permitted into the Tower; all were slain. But the Veiled One had lured Vulkaar from his vows and won his obedience. The Dwarf’s heart was a blazing crucible of greed and lust; by playing subtly on his greed, Zarlak had bound him to his service and shared the secret of his intentions with him. Vulkaar proved a precious ally. Together they were consumed with but a single wish: to rape the Iron Tower of its sacred treasure, the Medusa, and with the power of the Demon’s Heart, to gain mastery of many worlds. Vulkaar slavered at the thought: the Master had promised him gold… and women… Earthling women!