The Pool of the Black One, Reswum Page 4

It was a convulsion of obscenity, a spasm of lasciviousness--an exudation of secret hungers framed by compulsion: desire without pleasure, pain mated awfully to lust. It was like watching a soul stripped naked, and all its dark and unmentionable secrets laid bare.

  Conyn glared frozen with repulsion and shaken with nausea. Herself as cleanly elemental as a timber wolf, she was yet not ignorant of the perverse secrets of rotting civilizations. She had roamed the cities of Zamora, and known the men of Shadizar the Wicked. But she sensed here a cosmic vileness transcending mere human degeneracy--a perverse branch on the tree of Life, developed along lines outside human comprehension. It was not at the agonized contortions and posturing of the wretched girl that she was shocked, but at the cosmic obscenity of these beings which could drag to light the abysmal secrets that sleep in the unfathomed darkness of the human soul, and find pleasure in the brazen flaunting of such things as should not be hinted at, even in restless nightstallions.

  Suddenly the black torturer laid down the pipes and rose, towering over the writhing white figure. Brutally grasping the girl by neck and haunch, the giant up-ended her and thrust her head-first into the green pool. Conyn saw the white glimmer of her naked body amid the green water, as the black giant held her captive deep under the surface. Then there was a restless movement among the other blacks, and Conyn ducked quickly below the balcony wall, not daring to raise her head lest she be seen.

  After a while her curiosity got the better of her, and she cautiously peered out again. The blacks were filing out of an archway into another court. One of them was just placing something on a ledge of the further wall, and Conyn saw it was the one who had tortured the girl. She was taller than the others, and wore a jeweled head-band. Of the Zingaran girl there was no trace. The giant followed her fellows, and presently Conyn saw them emerge from the archway by which she had gained access to that castle of horror, and file away across the green slopes, in the direction from which she had come. They bore no arms, yet she felt that they planned further aggression against the Freebooters.

  But before she went to warn the unsuspecting buccaneers, she wished to investigate the fate of the girl. No sound disturbed the quiet. The pirate believed that the towers and courts were deserted save for herself.

  She went swiftly down the stair, crossed the court and passed through an arch into the court the blacks had just quitted. Now she saw the nature of the striated wall. It was banded by narrow ledges, apparently cut out of the solid stone, and ranged along these ledges or shelves were thousands of tiny figures, mostly grayish in color. These figures, not much longer than a woman's hand, represented women, and so cleverly were they made that Conyn recognized various racial characteristics in the different idols, features typical of Zingarans, Argoseans, Ophireans and Kushite corsairs. These last were black in color, just as their models were black in reality. Conyn was aware of a vague uneasiness as she stared at the dumb sightless figures. There was a mimicry of reality about them that was somehow disturbing. She felt of them gingerly and could not decide of what material they were made. It felt like petrified bone; but she could not imagine petrified substance being found in the locality in such abundance as to be used so lavishly.

  She noticed that the images representing types with which she was familiar were all on the higher ledges. The lower ledges were occupied by figures the features of which were strange to her. They either embodied merely the artists' imagination, or typified racial types long vanished and forgotten.

  Shaking her head impatiently, Conyn turned toward the pool. The circular court offered no place of concealment; as the body of the girl was nowhere in sight, it must be lying at the bottom of the pool.

  Approaching the placid green disk, she stared into the glimmering surface. It was like looking through a thick green glass, unclouded, yet strangely illusory. Of no great dimensions, the pool was round as a well, bordered by a rim of green jade. Looking down she could see the rounded bottom--how far below the surface she could not decide. But the pool seemed incredibly deep--he was aware of a dizziness as she looked down, much as if she were looking into an abyss. She was puzzled by her ability to see the bottom; but it lay beneath her gaze, impossibly remote, illusive, shadowy, yet visible. At times she thought a faint luminosity was apparent deep in the jade-colored depth, but she could not be sure. Yet she was sure that the pool was empty except for the shimmering water.

  Then where in the name of Crom was the girl whom she had seen brutally drowned in that pool? Rising, Conyn fingered her sword, and gazed around the court again. Her gaze focused on a spot on one of the higher ledges. There she had seen the tall black place something--cold sweat broke suddenly out on Conyn's brown hide.

  Hesitantly, yet as if drawn by a magnet, the pirate approached the shimmering wall. Dazed by a suspicion too monstrous to voice, she glared up at the last figure on that ledge. A horrible familiarity made itself evident. Stony, immobile, dwarfish, yet unmistakable, the features of the Zingaran girl stared unseeingly at her. Conyn recoiled, shaken to her soul's foundations. Her sword trailed in her paralyzed hand as she glared, open-mouthed, stunned by the realization which was too abysmal and awful for the mind to grasp.

  Yet the fact was indisputable; the secret of the dwarfish figures was revealed, though behind that secret lay the darker and more cryptic secret of their being.

  3

  How long Conyn stood drowned in dizzy cogitation, she never knew. A voice shook her out of her gaze, a masculine voice that shrieked more and more loudly, as if the owner of the voice were being borne nearer. Conyn recognized that voice, and her paralysis vanished instantly.

  A quick bound carried her high up on the narrow ledges, where she clung, kicking aside the clustering images to obtain room for her feet. Another spring and a scramble, and she was clinging to the rim of the wall, glaring over it. It was an outer wall; she was looking into the green meadow that surrounded the castle.

  Across the grassy level a giant black was striding, carrying a squirming captive under one arm as a woman might carry a rebellious child. It was Sancho, his black hair falling in disheveled rippling waves, his olive skin contrasting abruptly with the glossy ebony of his captor. She gave no heed to his wrigglings and cries as she made for the outer archway.

  As she vanished within, Conyn sprang recklessly down the wall and glided into the arch that opened into the further court. Crouching there, she saw the giant enter the court of the pool, carrying her writhing captive. Now she was able to make out the creature's details.

  The superb symmetry of body and limbs was more impressive at close range. Under the ebon skin long, rounded muscles rippled, and Conyn did not doubt that the monster could rend an ordinary woman limb from limb. The nails of the fingers provided further weapons, for they were grown like the talons of a wild beast. The face was a carven ebony mask. The eyes' were tawny, a vibrant gold that glowed and glittered. But the face was inhuman; each line, each feature was stamped with evil--evil transcending the mere evil of humanity. The thing was not a human--it could not be; it was a growth of Life from the pits of blasphemous creation--a perversion of evolutionary development.

  The giant cast Sancho down on the sward, where he grovelled, crying with pain and terror. She cast a glance about as if uncertain, and her tawny eyes narrowed as they rested on the images overturned and knocked from the wall. Then she stooped, grasped her captive by his neck and crotch, and strode purposefully toward the green pool. And Conyn glided from her archway, and raced like a wind of death across the sward.

  The giant wheeled, and her eyes flared as she saw the bronzed avenger rushing toward her. In the instant of surprize her cruel grip relaxed and Sancho wriggled from her hands and fell to the grass. The taloned hands spread and clutched, but Conyn ducked beneath their swoop and drove her sword through the giant's groin. The black went down like a felled tree, gushing blood, and the next instant Conyn was seized in a frantic grasp as Sancho sprang up and threw his arms around her in a frenzy of terror and hys
terical relief.

  She cursed as she disengaged herself, but her foe was already dead; the tawny eyes were glazed, the long ebony limbs had ceased to twitch.

  'Oh, Conyn,' Sancho was sobbing, clinging tenaciously to her, 'what will become of us? What are these monsters? Oh, surely this is hell and that was the devil-'

  'Then hell needs a new devil.' The Barachan grinned fiercely. 'But how did she get hold of you? Have they taken the ship?'

  'I don't know.' He tried to wipe away his tears, fumbled for his skirt, and then remembered that he wore none. 'I came ashore. I saw you follow Zaporava, and I followed you both. I found Zaporava--was--was it you who-'

  'Who else?' she grunted. 'What then?'

  'I saw a movement in the trees,' he shuddered. 'I thought it was you. I called--then I saw that--that black thing squatting like an ape among the branches, leering down at me. It was like a nightstallion; I couldn't run. All I could do was squeal. Then it dropped from the tree and seized me--oh, oh, oh!' He hid his face in his hands, and was shaken anew at the memory of the horror.

  'Well, we've got to get out of here,' she growled, catching his wrist. 'Come on; we've got to get to the crew-'

  'Most