Kellory the Warlock

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2THE BURNING BRIDGE

It took him most of the night to scale the rugged sides of Mount Yothlymbris. Kellory was as agile as a monkey: every inch sinewy muscle. He had a fearless head for heights, and a recklessness that amounted to daredeviltry. But his right hand, gloved in black leather, was stiff and useless, and lack of it greatly hampered his ability to climb.

From scarp to scarp he went, while the Opal Moon rode up the zenith; from spire to spire and ledge to ledge he labored, while the Emerald Moon and the Moon of Amber climbed to join their sister on the heights. Dawn was a pallid ghost haunting the world’s far eastern rim when he came to the crest at last.

And gazed upon the Lake of Flame.

It was a glimpse into the Inferno, that lake. Red light beat up from it, and poisonous winds like the breath of the desert simoon blew over those burning waves. The bitter stench of sulphur hung heavy on the air. Kellory crawled to the edge of the lava lake and peered over, though the baking heat made his fierce green eyes ache and water.

Imagine a restless mirror of sullen, glowing crimson. A yellow froth of sulphurous foam bescummed the sluggish waves of the liquid flame. Little serpents of bright canary fire flickered and crawled over the wrinkled, cherry-red surface of the lava. The light that glowed up from it was like the breath of a furnace. Such a deathly, incandescent lake smolders before the brass gates of Pandemonium, city of hell.

Kellory could not survive the Luciferian embrace of those thick, crawling waves for an instant. Like a moth in a candle-flame he would crisp and char. But cross it he must.

He circled the lake of fiery brimstone. The margin was like no other land on all Zephrondus. The up-spewings of the blazing moat, the stony vomitings, lay curdled and scaly like petrified black serpents, in a Laocoön-tangle of porous, glass-sharp lava-stone. Aye, had it not been for the tough sandals of dragonhide he wore on his feet, high-laced over the ankles, the sharp-bladed stony serpents would probably have slashed his feet to gory ribbons, as if he had walked barefoot across a field of naked razors.

But then, few men ever came to this place, for few indeed were they who would trouble the seclusion of the Green Enchanter…

Amidst the lake of liquid fire, a black spire lifted. The crest of that spire was hewn (by, it was whispered, no human hand, but through the uncanny artifice of captive djinn) into a fantastic black castle. Through the drifting fumes of powdery yellow sulphur, he could see the looming bulk: an ebon mass of walls, turrets, pylons, domes, columns. Glass-smooth they were, and the changeful and wavering red fight of the lava moat was eerily reflected therein, as in warped and ebon mirrors.

In that weird black castle, carven from the mountain peak, dwelt Phazdaliom the Green Enchanter. And Kellory would gain his gates or perish.

And then he saw the bridge.

All of harsh red iron it was, spanning the fiery lake like a Titan’s scimitar. The boy’s heart sank within him. He had hoped to gain entry into the Enchanter’s dark palace by secret and devious paths; but this looked the only means. It was walk the bridge, or swim the moat—and flesh cannot endure the burning kiss of those red waves.

Like a gliding shadow he crept to the portal of the bridge. Here iron pillars loomed, and they were worked to the leering likeness of devil-heads, with mirrored balls of black glass for eyes, wherein whose orbs the red fires of the lake blazed and crawled with sentient movements.

Eyes of slithering fire stared down at the boy who stood before the gate. Dagger-fanged jaws of rust-enscaled iron gaped in cruel mockery. And upon the brows of those snarling masks was cut the Sign of Fear.

But Kellory must go forward now. So, defiantly, he set one sandaled foot upon that bridge—

And sprang back with a gasp of pain! Crouching, he peered at the sole of his leathern sandal. It was black and smoking as if a burning brand had been pressed against it but a moment before. And again his spirits sank within him: of course! After numberless aeons through which the iron bridge had arched above those incandescent waves, the metal had soaked up the furnace-hearted heat.

The iron bridge was red-hot, and it burned like fire. He could not go ten steps before his sandals would crisp and sear. To go farther would mean he must crawl between the wizard’s gates, with feet mere blackened knobs of charred and useless flesh!