Wall of Serpents Read online

  One of the servants with a rush torch showed him and Belphebe down to the end of the hall where the lock bed was. It was bigger than a Pullman section, but not very much, and both of them had to roll up clothes for pillows ...

  -

  "What the hell's that?" said Shea, sitting upright and cocking an ear toward the foot of the bed.

  Belphebe giggled where she lay. "That, my most puissant and delectable lord, would seem to be the hero and his spouse engaged in a sport we wot of—to wit, a quarrel within the household. Hark! She has just called him frog spawn."

  Shea gazed at the partition which separated them from the room to which Lemminkainen had retired. "Well, I hope they get over it soon," he said. "With your woods-trained ears, you can make out what they're saying and enjoy the show, but all it sounds like to me is a racket."

  They did get through with it fairly soon, at that. But now the reindeer skins that served as blankets were too hot when they were on and he was too cold with them off. Besides, the straw mattress resembled a relief map of the Himalayas, and he never could get used to sleeping in a place where there weren't any windows, even if cracks in the outer wall did admit enough air.

  Something scratched at the door of the lock bed.

  Shea listened for a minute, then turned over.

  The something scratched again, this time in what was clearly a signal, for the scratching came one—two— three.

  Shea jacknifed to a sitting posture in the Pullman berth and slid the door of the lock bed open a crack. Down the hall, the fire on the hearth was at the ember stage, throwing a red light over the two mounds beside it that must be Bayard and his Dunyazad. It gave just illumination enough for Shea to make out the figure of the nice little dish, Kylliki, bending over at the entrance to the lock bed. One finger went to her lips and then beckoned.

  Shea experienced a dreadful if momentary sinking of the heart at the thought he might have a female wolf on his hands, but Kylliki settled the question for him by sliding the door of the lock bed farther open and reaching past him to touch Belphebe into wakefulness, then sat down on the edge of the lock bed. When the couple had taken their places beside her, she leaned close and said in a stage whisper, "There is treason afoot"

  "Oh—oh," said Shea. "What kind?"

  "My husband, the hero Kaukomieli. Who can resist him?"

  "I dunno, but we can give it the old college try. What's he up to?"

  "I learned but now his purpose. 'Tis to evade the making of the spell for bringing from hence to hither your other friend. Such wizardries leave him always weak and foredone, as you saw but this evening."

  "Why, the ..." began Shea, reaching for his epee, but Belphebe said, "Hold, Harold, there must be more in this than meets the eye, and meseems it's more a matter for craft than violence." She turned to Kylliki. "Why do you give us this tale? It cannot be a matter of concern for you whether this Pete be summoned or no."

  In the darkness they could plainly hear the girl grind her teeth. "Because of the other wing to his bird of thought," she flared. "Instead of going to Pohjola, he'd be off to the lakes with that immodest she-devil who wears no clothes."

  "Dunyazad. What do you want us to do about it?"

  "Be off," said Kylliki. "Take him to Pohjola with the dawn. It is the lesser peril."

  Shea thought of Lemminkainen's barrel-like chest and huge arms. "I don't see how we're going to make him do anything he doesn't want to," he said.

  Kylliki laid a hand on his arm. "You do not know my lord. This night he lies weaker than a newborn reindeer calf with the back-whip of his spell-making. I have a rope. Bind him while the weakness is on him, and steal him away."

  Belphebe said, "I think she has the key that will unlock our troubles, Harold. If we bind Lemminkainen tonight, then we can keep him tied up until he makes the spell that will bring Pete. And then he will be too weary to think on revenges."

  "Good for you, kid," said Shea, heaving himself to his feet and reaching for his pants. "All right, let's go. But I think we'll need Walter to help."

  Getting Walter was not so easy as it looked. He was sleeping the sleep of the just after his prolonged vacation in Xanadu, and shaking him only produced a series of contented grunts. Dunyazad's head came out of the bearskins though, to look at the three standing over her with mild, cow-like eyes, not saying a word, even when Kylliki hissed at her like a cat. Shea decided that Dunyazad belonged to the beautiful-but-dumb type.

  After an interminable time, Bayard pulled himself together and accompanied Shea into Lemminkainen's room, where a rush-light held by Kylliki showed the hero sprawled cornerwise across the bed with all his clothes on, fully dressed and snoring like a sawmill. He didn't even move when Shea cautiously lifted a leg to put a coil of rawhide rope around it, and only changed the rhythm of his snores as they rolled him back and forth, wrapping him like a cocoon in the tough rawhide.

  Kylliki said, "His mother will think little good of this, the old harridan! She cares for nothing save that he stays by her hand. I could tear her hair out."

  "Why don't you?" suggested Shea, with a yawn. "Well, come on, kid, let's try to get a little shut-eye. When that big lug comes to, it will be like trying to sleep in the same house as a steam calliope."

  He was amply borne out after what seemed little more than ten minutes of slumber, and jerked out of bed to follow Bayard into the other room, from which a series of truly majestic howls were emerging.

  Lemminkainen was rolling around the floor of the room, shrieking curses and trying to writhe loose, while Kylliki, with no attempt at all to disguise the sneer on her pretty face, was cursing just as fast at him. Suddenly, the hero relaxed, screwed up his face, and in his singing voice began to chant:

  -

  "Think you that I'll heed your wishes,

  Now you've flouted and provoked me,

  By your stratagems and insults?

  I will live to see you, strangers,

  All except the fair Tunjasat,

  Hurled into the depths of Mana,

  Down to Hiisi's kingdom tumbling!

  Think you that this rope can hold me,

  Me, the wizard Kaukolainen?

  Just observe how from my members

  Are the cords impotent falling!"

  -

  Shea stared; it was true. The cords around his feet were working loose. He tried to think of a counter-spell.

  Bayard said, "Hey, cut that out!" He seemed to be addressing a point a foot or two beyond Lemminkainen.

  "Cut what out?" asked Shea.

  "Untying him."

  "But if his magic ..."

  "Magic my foot! I'm talking about the old lady."

  "What old lady?" said Shea.

  "I guess she's Lemminkainen's mother. Are you blind?"

  "Apparently I am. You mean she's there, invisible, untying him?"

  "Certainly, but she's not in the least invisible."

  The coils of rope had worked themselves loose from feet, ankles and knees. The triumphantly grinning Lemminkainen gave a massive wriggle and came to his feet.

  "Well, for Lord's sake, stop her!" said Shea.

  "Huh? Oh, yes, I suppose so." Bayard stepped over to where Lemminkainen was standing and grabbed at the air. There was a scream; a couple of feet away from the hero, Lemminkainen's mother materialized with her hair over her eyes, glaring as Bayard held both her hands. Kylliki glared right back at her.

  "Now, now," said Shea. "We're not going to hurt your son, lady. Only make sure that he carries out his part of the bargain."

  "An evil bargain. You will take him to his death," croaked the old woman.

  "And you would make him a woman-bound weakling instead of a hero," snapped Kylliki.

  "That's right," said Shea. "Must say I'm disappointed in you, Kauko."

  A portentous frown had replaced Lemminkainen's smile. "How mean you?" he demanded.

  "Here I thought you were the greatest hero of Kalevala, and you get cold feet over the Pohjola proje
ct."

  Lemminkainen gave an inarticulate bellow, then subsided to a mere roar. "Me, afraid? By Jumala, loose me from these bonds and I'll make you a head shorter to show you how afraid I am!"

  "Nothing doing, Toots. You fetch Pete from Xanadu, and then we'll discuss any changes of plan."

  The hero put on his crafty expression. "If your friend the spry detective is brought here from Xanadu, will you, Payart, give me the fair Tunjasat?"

  "I really don't think ..." began Bayard, but Shea cut him off with, "Nothing doing. That wasn't in the original contract. You go right ahead, or the whole deal's off."

  "Well, then. But from these bonds you must release me, else my magic spells will falter."

  Shea swung to Kylliki. "Can I trust him?" he asked.

  Her head came up. "Fool! My husband is no promise-breaker ... But—he may put a spell on Payart to make him yield up the maiden."

  Shea stepped across to Lemminkainen and began to untie knots. "That's right, Walter. And besides, there's the danger that you might get blown back into Xanadu by the spell. You better get out of here, as far away from the building as you can. I don't know what the local range of magic is, but it can't be very high."

  Bayard made for the door. As the last loop fell from his arms, Lemminkainen stretched them over his head, sat down and corrugated his forehead in thought. At last he said, "Are you ready, Harold? Good—let us begin."

  He tilted back his head and sang.

  -

  "Oh, I know thee, Peter Protsky,

  And from Xanadu I call thee ..."

  -

  He droned on. Shea quietly worked away on the sorites. Up and up went the voice of Lemminkainen, and just as it almost reached screaming pitch, in through the door came Dunyazad, her lovely, vacant face inquiring.

  "Have you seen my lord?" she asked.

  "... thou art with us!" finished Lemminkainen, on a high C.

  There was a rush of air; for a moment only a cloud of burning sparks hung where the houri had been, and then they went out, leaving the space occupied by a solid-looking man in a rumpled brown American business suit.

  Chapter Five

  "What the hell is this?" Pete said, and then his eye fell on Harold Shea. "Shea! You're under arrest! Kidnapping and resisting an officer!"

  Shea said, "I thought we'd been all through that."

  "Oh, you did, did you? And you thought you could stash me away in that screwball fairyland while you went on and rolled your hoop? Well, you've got staging an indecent theatrical performance on top of the other charges now. How do you like that? You better come along with me."

  "Come along where?" said Shea.

  "Huh?" Pete Brodsky looked around the room and at the slumping Lemminkainen. "Bejabbers, where is this dump?"

  "In Kalevala."

  "And where would that be? Canada?"

  Shea explained. "And here's the wife I'm supposed to have kidnapped or murdered. Darling, this is Detective Brodsky. Pete, this is Belphebe. Does she look dead?"

  "Are you really the dame that disappeared at that picnic, back in Ohio?" asked Brodsky.

  "Marry, that I am," said Belphebe, "and through no fault of my husband's, either."

  "And in the second place," said Shea, "you're out of your bailiwick. You haven't any authority here."

  "You con-merchants always try to play it smart, don't you? The law of close pursuit takes care of that. Constructively, I've been in close pursuit of you ever since you pulled that fast one on me back in Ohio. Where's the nearest American consul?"

  "Better ask Lemminkainen. He's the local boss."

  "The big guy? Can he speak English?"

  Shea smiled. "You got along all right in Xanadu, didn't you? You're speaking Finnish without knowing it."

  "Okay. Say, mister ..."

  Lemminkainen had been sitting slumped over. Now he lifted his head. "Get you hence and let me sorrow," he said. "Ah, that by my own efforts I should be deprived of the embraces of the beautiful Tunjasat!" He glared at Shea. "Man of ill-omen," he said, "if I but had my strength, there would be an accounting."

  Kylliki said, "Much strength will come to him who eats good food."

  Lemminkainen appeared to brighten at the thought. "Then why do you waste time in foolish chatter when food is lacking?" he said practically, and Kylliki scuttled out, followed by his mother.

  Shea went off to hunt up Bayard and explain what had happened to Dunyazad. The psychologist did not seem unbearably grieved. "An excellent exercise for the libido," he said, "but I fear that in time she would have become importunate. Persons of her order of intelligence frequently consider that beauty entitles them to great consideration without effort." He accompanied Shea back into the house for breakfast.

  Lemminkainen took his in his bedroom while the other three ate with Pete Brodsky, who did prodigious execution to a breakfast of roast meat, cheese and beer, belching appreciatively afterward.

  "Maybe I got you Joes kinda wrong," he said, as he wiped his mouth with a dirty handkerchief. "You may be all right guys at that—sorta elect, if you get me. Gimme the pitch, will you?"

  Shea told him as well as possible what had happened in the continuum of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and why Vaclav Polacek and Dr. Reed Chalmers were still there. "But," he continued virtuously, "we couldn't very well leave you and Walter Bayard in Xanadu, could we?"

  "I get it," said Brodsky. "You figured you had to spring us out of that reefer-dream or else pull a bit yourself. Okay, so you're a square. What's the next lay?"

  Shea told him about the Pohjola project. Brodsky looked glum. "So we gotta go up there and crack this box with a lot of them doorshakers on the lay? Me, I don't like it. Why can't we just take it on the lam for Ohio? I'll kill the rap for you."

  Shea shook his head. "Not me. Especially after the fuss I made about Lemminkainen running out on his end of the bargain. Listen, you're in a place where magic works, and it's funny stuff. When you get something by promising something else, and then try not to deliver, you're apt to find yourself without the thing you wanted."

  "You mean if we went lamester, this Bayard and me would land back in that de luxe hoppen?"

  "Something like that."

  Brodsky shook his head. "You're shot with horseshoes that you got a Joe with you that believes in predestination. Okay, when do we take it?"

  "Probably tomorrow. Lemminkainen knocked himself out bringing you from Xanadu and won't be fit till then."

  "I got it," said Brodsky. "What we got for today? Just bending the ears?"

  Shea turned around and looked out the window. "I guess so," he said. "It seems to have started raining."

  It was a long day. Kylliki and Lemminkainen's mother trotted in and out, carrying trays of food to the recumbent hero, and occasionally dropping one off at the table in the hall, where Brodsky and Walter Bayard had started an endless discourse on predestination, original sin, and Cartesianism. After a while, Shea and Belphebe wandered off into a corner and let them talk, since neither Kylliki nor the mother seemed very sociable. It had already grown toward evening and the lowering skies were definitely darker, though none of the rush-lights had been kindled, when Bayard and Brodsky approached the couple.

  "Say, listen," said the detective. "Me and this Bayard, we been thinking, and we worked up a hot lineup. You know this magic stuff. How about you putting one of these spells on Lemon Meringue there, and make him drop his score on this Pohjola joint—just skip it? Then he just springs us back where we belong, see?"

  Shea was doubtful. "I don't know. There's likely to be a kick-back. He's a pretty hot wizard, and playing on his home grounds, where he knows all the rules and I don't. Besides, I warned you about what happens when you try to get out of a magical bargain."

  "But look here," said Bayard, "we aren't proposing anything unethical, even in the terms of magic. All we're suggesting is a spell that will make him see things our way. He'll have the credit of having performed a great action in rescuing us, which thes
e heroes of romance prize more highly than anything else, as I gather it. As a more material reward, you can leave him some of your artifacts. That sword of yours, or Belphebe's bow, for instance."

  Shea turned to his wife. "What do you say, kid?"

  "I like it none too well, but I can see no true argument contrarious. Do as you will, Harold."

  "Well, I suppose doing almost anything's better than doing nothing." He stood up. "Okay, I'll try."