Mad Moon of Dreams by Brian Lumley

Author:Brian Lumley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2012-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VI

Strange Sanctuary

Ula and Una, as fine and desirable a pair of ladies as ever were lusted after (and won, however contrived the double “conquest” had been) by dreamland’s most fabled-to-be questers, were in dire straits. Well-proportioned girls—to say the least—from an early age, their father Ham Gidduf of Andahad had used not so jokingly to threaten them with chastity belts if they so much as looked at boys. (Not that this had stopped boys looking at them!) How dearly they wished they might be secured in just such weighty nether-garments right now …

Dark-haired, green-eyed and delicately elfin-featured, despite their very worldly prominence in other areas, they were supple and willowy … and very much on edge. Neither one of the girls had slept but in brief snatches for two days now, since the first reports had reached their captors of the approach of a flotilla of ships out of the south. For Ula and Una had known that they were merely bait on the hook, and that the hoped-for catch would be David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer.

If the Lengites and their allies could only remove these two obstacles to their Master’s plans, then all should go very well indeed. Since it had been known well in advance that eventually the pair must be recruited on the side of the dreamlands, plans had early been laid first to lure, then to dispatch them. And if anything at all were guaranteed to bring the questers a-running, surely it was the knowledge that former friends of theirs—and most certainly former lovers—were in trouble. Hence Ula and Una’s this time very genuine abduction.

And yet strangely, they had not been harmed. Perhaps there was logic in this, too: if the questers should get it into their heads that the girls had been mistreated, then perhaps they might carry such a notion to its ultimate conclusion and suspect that they had been murdered—horribly. Which in turn would doubtless provoke or precipitate a berserker attack in which the men of the flotilla would fight like madmen, regardless of the cost. This might well endanger not only Oorn but the aeon-awaited arrival in the dreamlands of her Lord, the moon-god Mnomquah himself.

Last night, however, the luck of the twin beauties had seemed dramatically to change, and then it had become apparent that a certain promise made by the Dukes of Isharra to the degenerate human members of their ship’s crew was about to be kept. Namely: that as soon as Hero and Eldin were in chains, then the twin daughters of Ham Gidduf would be handed over to the crew for their amusement. And the horned ones, who formed an even larger percentage of the ship’s contingent, had likewise been offered whatever was left when the Isharrans were finished!

Which was why, as soon as they heard jubilant whispers that indeed Hero and Eldin had been trapped, Ula and Una—who thus far had enjoyed a small measure of freedom—had contrived to lock, bolt and bar themselves into the comparative opulence of the Dukes’ own cabin aboard the bad ship Shantak.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.