A Vision of Hell: The Realms of Tartarus, Book Two Read online

  Table of Contents

  Borgo Press Books by Brian Stableford

  Copyright Information

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Borgo Press Books by Brian Stableford

  Alien Abduction: The Wiltshire Revelations

  Asgard’s Conquerors (Asgard #2)

  Asgard’s Heart (Asgard #3)

  Asgard’s Secret (Asgard #1)

  Balance of Power (Daedalus Mission #5)

  The Best of Both Worlds and Other Ambiguous Tales

  Beyond the Colors of Darkness and Other Exotica

  Changelings and Other Metaphoric Tales

  The City of the Sun (Daedalus Mission #4)

  Complications and Other Science Fiction Stories

  The Cosmic Perspective and Other Black Comedies Critical Threshold (Daedalus Mission #2)

  The Cthulhu Encryption: A Romance of Piracy

  The Cure for Love and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

  The Dragon Man

  The Eleventh Hour

  The Face of Heaven (Realms of Tartarus #1)

  The Fenris Device (Hooded Swan #5)

  Firefly: A Novel of the Far Future

  Les Fleurs du Mal: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution

  The Florians (Daedalus Mission #1)

  The Gardens of Tantalus and Other Delusions

  The Gates of Eden

  A Glimpse of Infinity (Realms of Tartarus #3)

  The Golden Fleece and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

  The Great Chain of Being and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

  Halycon Drift (Hooded Swan #1)

  The Haunted Bookshop and Other Apparitions

  In the Flesh and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

  The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels

  Journey to the Core of Creation: A Romance of Evolution

  Kiss the Goat: A Twenty-First-Century Ghost Story

  The Legacy of Erich Zann and Other Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

  Luscinia: A Romance of Nightingales and Roses

  The Mad Trist: A Romance of Bibliomania

  The Mind-Riders

  The Moment of Truth

  Nature’s Shift: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution

  An Oasis of Horror: Decadent Tales and Contes Cruels

  The Paradise Game (Hooded Swan #4)

  The Paradox of the Sets (Daedalus Mission #6)

  The Plurality of Worlds: A Sixteenth-Century Space Opera

  Prelude to Eternity: A Romance of the First Time Machine

  Promised Land (Hooded Swan #3)

  The Quintessence of August: A Romance of Possession

  The Return of the Djinn and Other Black Melodramas

  Rhapsody in Black (Hooded Swan #2)

  Salome and Other Decadent Fantasies

  Streaking: A Novel of Probability

  Swan Song (Hooded Swan #6)

  The Tree of Life and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

  The Undead: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution

  Valdemar’s Daughter: A Romance of Mesmerism

  A Vision of Hell (Realms of Tartarus #2)

  War Games

  Wildeblood’s Empire (Daedalus Mission #3)

  The World Beyond: A Sequel to S. Fowler Wright’s The World Below

  Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction

  Xeno’s Paradox: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution

  Year Zero

  Yesterday Never Dies: A Romance of Metempsychosis

  Zombies Don’t Cry: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 1977, 2012 by Brian Stableford

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  Acknowledgments

  I am greatly obliged to Heather Datta for her great kindness and consummate efficiency in scanning the text of the first edition of this novel, thus enabling me to get it back into print.

  CHAPTER 1

  Camlak was not unduly sensitive to time. It passed by without dragging his consciousness. It flowed over him in an easy stream. The silence was profound. The Ahrima had gone, but the fires they had left burning were still filling the air with heavy smoke and the stark smell of ashes. There would be a while yet before the fire yielded to the gentle smell of decay and carrion that would bring the scavengers in from the fields, and from the wild land beyond Clauster Ridge.

  The Old Man of Stalhelm was hurt, but not badly—at least, not so far as bone and flesh and blood were concerned. The arm which he had broken in the fight with the harrowhound had shattered for a second time, and he knew that this time there would be no mending it. From now on he was a three-limb. But that was little enough. It would not have taken him out of the fight, and saved his life. A blow on the head had done that, without inflicting any lasting damage. His clothing was covered in blood—dry by now—and no doubt he had looked dead enough to the marauders, lying as he was within the star-shadow of the earthen wall, with the mutilated bodies of the honest dead all around him. It was, of course, their blood. Blood they had spilled on to him, so that chance might rule in favor of his continued existence. The principal hurt which he had sustained was the pain of the question: why?

  He was three times lucky.

  First, he had fallen from a light, glancing blow, and sheer exhaustion had sucked him to the ground and hugged him into the crack between earth and earth-wall. Somehow, he had found the strength to suppress his courage. How? The Ahrima were already over the wall and involved in the simple business of slaughter. It was natural that he should have fought with indomitable fury, without any such self-control, or even self-awareness. He should have bounced back from the blow. But he had not. He had sagged, had contained his instincts, had vanished into the black clothes of unconsciousness.

  Then, somehow the Ahrima had failed to find him. Or failed to find him alive. The one who had felled him must have been felled in his turn, at the right moment. At precisely the right moment. He must have died very swiftly, spilling his blood with such profligacy that he seemed to have exploded. A combination of chances: a neat riposte of fortune. Too neat.

  Lastly, Ermold must have been already dead. The Men Without Souls from Walgo had tak
en the mask and joined the Ahrima in the assault on Stalhelm. A victory not so much for cowardice as for Ermold’s hatred. He had come to kill instead of being slaughtered by the horde. He would die anyway, but he had come to kill first. Had he survived the storming of the wall, he would surely have come to take Camlak’s head. A gesture to underline the purpose of it all. For old time’s sake. Chance had forbidden him that satisfaction.

  Why?

  Camlak hurt inside his head. There was a fever in his brain. A fog. He tried to reach down into the depths where his Gray Soul lived, but the way was blocked. Honest pain would have cut through the miasma like a hot spear. No man was denied the company of his Gray Soul in the moment before death, or the moment of bodily crisis. So Camlak believed, with reason. But he was trapped in his glutinous consciousness. He was not going to die. He was alone.

  He believed that there had to be an answer to the question: why?

  But he did not even know what shape such an answer might possess.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Ahrima had not lingered long once Stalhelm was taken and set afire. There was nothing to stay for. Everything which was truly valuable had been taken by the women who had left for Lehr the moment the Ahrima were sighted and the warning given. Camlak might have been counted lucky even a fourth time, in that the marauders had chosen to move on, but it was not chance which dictated the decision. The Ahrima wanted blood, and a great deal of blood. They had not spilled so much as a mouthful at Walgo, and fully three-fourths of the population of Stalhelm had fled before their advance. They wanted the blood of that three-fourths. They wanted to ride down the women and children who hastened along the road to Lehr. They wanted the plunder of Stalhelm far more than they wanted the rest or the food that was standing in the fields. It was not their way. Once the slaughter of the townspeople was completed...then they could think of rest and the licking of wounds and the filling of bellies. At Lehr, or perhaps Opilion, where they might not be expected so soon....

  In any case, Camlak would not have claimed luck for the decision which would—almost inevitably—lead to the slaughter of his people. If the Ahrima caught the women and children on the road through Dossal Bog, then Stalhelm was obliterated. What the fire could not do, the sword would accomplish. It was the people that were Stalhelm, and once the people were dead...no Stalhelm. The name would remain, but names mean nothing.

  Some of the people would survive. Perhaps some of the warriors had managed to escape the burning village to fight again on the road. In any case, in Dossal Bog there would be ample opportunity to run and to hide. Some of the women, and particularly the children, would escape the Ahrima in the marshland. Some of those would survive the perils of the bog. Some, perhaps, would ultimately return to the blackened ruin that had been their home. But all that counted for very little. Camlak’s Stalhelm could not be recovered by a handful of children. Unless the warriors of Lehr came out to cover the retreat of the women, or something delayed the horde on the road, that Stalhelm would be strewn in a gigantic pool of blood all over the road through Dossal Bog.

  After that...well, the news would reach Lehr, Opilion, and fly like a freak wind through the north and west of Shairn. If the Shaira could then allow their common fears and needs and causes to overcome their petty quarreling and disputes over land, all Shairn might combine to raise an army and meet the Ahrima in a battle that would cut the horde’s strength so hard they would have to run. Even that would only be a beginning. With the heart of Shairn ripped open, its strength expended in a murderous encounter with the Ahrima, the Men Without Souls would move in, raiding the good lands, stealing Shairan land and taking Shairan slaves. After the war of extinction, the war of conquest.... And then....

  Harrowhounds would come. The vermin from the dark lands would spill over into the lighted lands of the Children of the Voice. Time and time and time would pass before Shairn became Shairn again. And if the Ahrima were not defeated, if no army was joined and the horde was not cut to such dimensions that the towns were safe...then Shairn might follow Stalhelm, and by the time the country lived again it would be something different. Something new.

  When Camlak finally came to his feet again he discovered that he was angry with Ermold. He was angry because of Ermold’s hate—the blind, unreasoning hate which had made him take the mask and join in the attack on Stalhelm. Camlak saw no reason for that hate, and because there was no reason he was angry. He considered Ermold’s taking of the mask a betrayal. Not a betrayal of the Shaira, to whom he owed no loyalty, but a betrayal of reason and of human nature. Walgo should have stood and fought. That was the way. Perhaps there was no difference between the Men Without Souls and the Ahrima but masks, but the masks meant something. They were real. The Men Without Souls had no reason to be something that they were not. They should have fought. Perhaps...perhaps they should have fought with Stalhelm, against the Ahrima. Was that against nature, too? Camlak thought not. Not against his nature. Ermold’s nature, on the other hand....

  Camlak dismissed the argument from his maddened mind.

  He could not think. The anger remained. He could still feel—perhaps too much.

  Camlak’s house was burning. The bricks were crumbling as the wooden framework and the roof were eaten away. When the fire died there would be nothing left but ash and rubble. In time, dust. Only dust. The smoke was foul, but Camlak managed to suck enough oxygen into his lungs to keep himself conscious and active. Foul air meant little enough to him, or to any child of the Underworld.

  Some of the other houses still stood, untouched. Something to come back to, if anyone could come back. Or somewhere for Hellkin to find refuge, somewhere for the Truemen who came from beyond Cudal Canal to establish themselves. Ultimately, the houses would decay, or form the focus for a new community. Either way, the real Stalhelm would be buried, haunted by the living and the dead alike. Nowhere and nowhen. Gone.

  Camlak wandered around the dried-up streets, searching out the bodies of the fallen, putting names to the faces and the faceless. He had the vague idea that others might be alive. But there was no one. It pained him to count how few of the bodies were Ahriman. He plucked masks off a few of the fallen, and shattered them by beating them against the cornerstones of houses which remained intact. He did not know why. He might have been searching for Ermold, though there was no real reason. In any case, he could not tell the Men Without Souls from the true Ahrima until he removed the masks. Though there were too few to give his counting satisfaction, there were too many to sort into real and unreal, looking for one filthy face, for no good reason.

  He felt guilty because he—the Old Man—should have been the only one singled out to survive (except, perhaps, for those who had run). He was the custodian of the staff. While the Ahrima were crossing the borders of Shairn, he had been taking power from the Star King Yami. Against the odds, against all the accusations, against the feeling of the people, he had established himself. He had fought the harrowhound to earn the right. And now he was Old Man of nothing, but still Old Man. What he felt was a strange kind of loneliness. He felt responsible for what had happened. He wanted to take the burden of guilt for the disaster on to himself. He was the Old Man, and he had earned it. He had earned it the hardest way of all. He felt that he had the right to feel betrayed by the chance which would not let him lie dead with the people—his people. They had never learned to trust him. They had never had the chance.

  Eventually, he tired of looking at the dead, and he went into one of the untouched houses to change his clothes. The Ahrima had smashed up what they could, but their assault had been cursory—there was no real reward, material or emotional, in destroying inert objects—and he had no difficulty in finding what he needed, and then in preparing himself a meal. What the Ahrima had left was sufficient—in fact, the stripping of the village was more the work of the women than the invaders. The women had taken all that they could carry. Too much. Too much in the way of baubles and cloth. Along with the working tools and the boo
ks, the irresistible trivia would make too heavy a burden. The fleeing women might find themselves betrayed by their fondnesses. The road to Lehr would be strewn with things which, after all, had to be thrown away. Would the greed and the delight in possession deliver them into the hands of the Ahrima? Would sound common sense or sheer blind panic have delivered them? There was no way of knowing.

  Even when he was rested and fed, clothed and armed, he still hesitated. He went back to wandering amid the dead, finding it impossible to believe that there was no life at all in Stalhelm. But by now there was. The starlings and the crabs were invading in force. Camlak began to kill, shattering the crabs with a stone axe. Against the starlings, he could do nothing. Eventually, he threw away the axe, because there were too many crabs. No matter how many he killed, it would make no difference. They would keep coming until the village could hold no more. No matter how many crabs were killed the Underworld was always as full of them as it could be. It made no sense. Killing them only made him feel worse.

  In the end, he had to leave Stalhelm to the scavengers. It was theirs now, and if he stayed he would be one of them. The only question in his mind was the matter of which way to go. Where and why? There was a road to Lehr, a road which might run with blood, and which might take him to his death. For no real reason. On the other hand, there was the Swithering Waste. No road was there, but perhaps some kind of destination. Nita had gone that way, with the man who had no face. Beyond the Waste was the metal wall, and beyond that...if there was a beyond. But that way was clouded with doubt no less than the road to Lehr. Whatever choice he made, there would only be more choices, until he was interrupted by death. There was no known way, now that Stalhelm was gone.

  Camlak felt the loneliness eating him from within.

  He went to find the map which had hung on the wall in the long house. It had been torn down and slashed into three pieces by a sword. He put the pieces together on the long table and adjusted the edges.

  Nita would have taken the man without a face and the girl Huldi over the hills called Anarek and Stiver, across the rocks at Scarmoon, and then into the Swithering Waste toward the Great Wall. Camlak tried to form an estimate of how far they would have gone, but the calculation defeated him. He had no way of measuring the time inside his head. If he could catch up with them while they were crossing Scarmoon, it would be easy enough to find them, but in the Waste it would need a miracle. The Waste was hundreds of miles across, and to the west it stretched to the dead cities and the very borders of the darklands—a vast expanse of poisoned shallows and jagged rock, completely overgrown and teeming with vermin—and worse. A death trap. No place to be wandering in search of other travelers. Once Nita was beyond Scarmoon, he would have virtually no chance of meeting her until the Wall. If that were so, then time now was not really of the essence.