Lost Worlds by Lin Carter (ed.)

Author:Lin Carter (ed.) [Carter, Lin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction Anthology
Publisher: Daw Books, Incorporated
Published: 1980-08-28T23:00:00+00:00

VI - The Thing That Walks in the Night

Deafening, filled with unendurable agony and horror, the scream rang out through the gloomy castle! Wakened suddenly from fitful, uneasy slumbers, the bandits sprang up, cursing, snatching up their weapons, staring about for the enemy that had struck suddenly and without warning—but there was nothing to be seen.

Thongor, who had taken a small antechamber off the central hall for his bedchamber, appeared naked in the doorway, Sarkozan, his broadsword, glittering in his hand.

Sentries peered about with wide eyes and white faces, but nothing untoward was to be seen. Yet something had happened—they could not all have dreamed that horrible shriek!

At Thongor’s command, a head count was taken, and one man was found to be missing. It was a fat, red-faced rogue called Kovor. He had bedded down with the main body of the men, who lay in a ragged circle around the huge bonfire they had built against the night chills. Now his pallet was empty.

One of the bandits suggested Kovor might have stepped outside to answer a call of nature. Thongor dispatched searchers to investigate, but they found nothing.

Urging the sentries to be wary, Thongor bade his men return to their interrupted slumbers, and withdrew Into his little room again. But hardly a single warrior of the band so much as closed his eyes through all the rest of that fear-haunted night.

At dawn, the men refreshed themselves with water from the small quantity they had dipped out of the running stream the night before, when they had camped in the hills. Then the young barbarian organized them into search parties and carefully directed the exploration of the central portion of the monstrous edifice.

Lest anyone become lost in the maze of suites and corridors and chambers, he commanded them to /Scratch the symbol of an arrow on the sill of every portal through which they passed, pointing back the way they had come, so that in any eventuality they should all be able to find their way back to the central hall. They trooped out, under search leaders designated by Chelim.

They found what was left of fat Kovor an hour later. A runner was sent back to fetch Thongor and the girl.

“We could smell it before there was anything to see,” panted the wild-eyed bandit as he guided the chieftain through the maze of dusty chambers. “Then we found—this/”

Zoroma moaned, covered her eyes and turned away.

Even Thongor, toughened as he was, felt his belly writhe and heart sicken within him as be peered beyond the portals of the room of horror.

It was a huge, square room, unadorned, its floor one solid piece of unbroken stone. The only element of decoration was a square design cut in the exact center of the floor.

Floor, walls and ceiling were besplattered with gouts of blood and gobbets of raw flesh. The stone chamber stank like’ a slaughterhouse.

Kovor had, literally, been tom apart. No fragment could be found that was any larger than a man’s thumbnail. His sword, dented and broken, lay in one corner.

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