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opening at the far end bordered by a stone-flagged path. Near a jut of rock that stretched into the stream
lay the figure of a man clad in full armor, his arm outstretched. His mailed glove almost touched a small
balass box, bound with gold, sitting on the ledge of rock. The water did not touch man or box.
That box looks interesting, quoth the lady.
Mayhap, my lady, offered Naghan the numim, it contains the part of the key to be found in this zone.
That we will not discover until
Let me, said Logu Fre-Da, and he moved forward. He stretched out his tail-hand.
My attention had been occupied by the dead man. The armor was of the kind favored in Loh, a fashion I
knew although not at that time having visited Walfarg in Loh, that mysterious continent of walled gardens
and veiled women. The old Empire of Walfarg, that men called the Empire of Loh, had long since
crumbled and only traces of a proud past were to be discerned in once-subject nations. This man had
traveled far from the west, over the ocean to reach his end here. He was a Chulik, and his savage
upthrust tusks were gilded. His skin appeared mummified, a pebbly green in configuration and color. In
his left hand he gripped a weapon with a wooden haft some six feet long, and whose head of blue steel
shaped like a holly leaf was by two inches short of a foot.
That cunning holly-leaf shape, with the nine sharp spikes each side set alternately forward and
backward, and the lowest pair extended downward into hooks, told me the weapon was the feared
strangdja of Chem.
Logu was a hyr-paktun, a man of immense experience in warfare and battle. He seized up the balass
box in his tail hand and, even as that tail swished up and threw the box to his brother, his thraxter was out
and just parrying in time the savage blow from the strangdja.
The dead man came to life the instant the box was moved.
He sprang up, ferocious, his Chulik-yellow face restored to its natural color, his tusks thrusting
aggressively. He simply charged maniacally straight for Modo, who held the box, swinging the deadly
strangdja in lethal arcs.
A single blow from that holly-leaf-blade might easily sunder through the Pachak s shield, a second rip his
head clean off.
He seeks to slay the man who holds the box! yelled Naghan. The lion-man s own halberd slashed at
the Chulik as the Undead passed, and was caught on the strangdja. For a single instant the two staved
weapons clung and clashed, and then with a supple quarter-staff trick, the halberd was flung off. Naghan
staggered back, raging with anger, to fling himself on again.
Throw the box! called Ariane in her clear voice.
The box arched up, and was caught by Logu, who waited until the Chulik advanced, madly, insensately,
and then the box sailed over to me. I caught it and prepared to use the Krozair blade one-handed.
Stories of the Undead circulate as freely on Kregen as on Earth more freely, seeing that they exist
there. They are often called Kaotim, for kao is one of the many words for death, and they are to be
avoided. Whether or not this example could be slain by steel I did not know, although I suspected he
might well be, seeing that he had resumed his living appearance when recalled to life.
Throw the box, Jak! called Ariane.
I threw it to her.
You rast! screeched Naghan at me, and fairly flung himself forward. But the Krozair brand flamed
before him. The superb Krozair longsword is not to be bested by a polearm no matter how redoubtable
its reputation or deadly its execution.
So the Chulik Kaotim sought to get past me, aiming a blow at Ariane, and I chopped him. Could one
feel sorry for slaying a man who was already dead?
When the Kaotim s second leg was chopped he had to fall, for the Undead had been hopping and
fighting on one. He hit the stone coping to the stream, and struggled to rise, and his stumps of legs bathed
in the water and no blood gushed from their severed ends.
Finally, Naghan, with a cry of: In the name of Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor! brought his halberd
down. The Kaotim s Chulik head rolled. No blood splashed. The gilt tusks shone in the light of the
torches. The armored body lay still.
For a moment there existed a silence in which the roar of the waterfall sounded thin and distant.
I said, If the key part is so important, as, indeed, it is, it would not have been entrusted to so feeble a
charge. I turned away. Whatever is in the box it will not be the key.
I do not know who opened the box.
All they found was a coil of hair, and a blue silk ribbon, and a tiny pearl and silver brooch.
The lady Ariane said, Put the things back in the box. Place it back on the ledge from whence it came.
This was done.
We stood back.
The Chulik head rolled. The legs walked. As Osiris was joined together, so that nameless Chulik
adventurer resumed his full stature, legs and head once more attached to his body. Painfully, he crawled
to the stone ledge and stretched out his hand toward the box and so once more died.
His yellow skin marbled over and granulated to that death-green color. He remained, fast locked in the
undying flesh, his ib forever barred from the Ice Floes of Sicce and the sunny uplands beyond.
Chapter Fourteen
Kov Loriman Mentions the Hunting Sword
The torches threw grotesque arabesques of light and shadow on the ripple-reflecting roof of the tunnel.
The stream ran wide and deep at our side. We pressed on along the stone path and we took it in turns to
lead, for we encountered many of the more ordinary water monsters of Kregen. Always, the two
Pachaks and the numim clustered close to their lady. There were in her retinue other powerful fighting
men, and between them and me we kept the way ahead clear.
Water runs downhill, said a Brukaj, his bulldog face savage as he drew back from slashing a
lizard-form back into the water from which it had writhed, hissing. So, at least we go in the right
direction.
May your Bruk-en-im smile on us, and prove you right, I said. For, by Makki-Grodno s disgusting
diseased tripes! I am much in need of fresh air and the sight of the suns.
After a time in which more scaly horrors were slashed and smashed back into the water, it was my turn
to yield the point position. Pressing back to the very water s edge, I scanned the dark, swiftly-running
stream as the people passed along.
A soft voice as Ariane passed said: I think you fight well, Jak. You are a paktun, I think.
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