Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [21]
Ehomba eyed it emotionlessly. Behind him, Simna ibn Sind looked up from his so far futile efforts. His eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. Initially wary, he quickly now found himself more perplexed than fearful.
It was another box.
IV
What are you going to do with that?” The swordsman’s tone reflected his uncertainty and confusion. “Tavern us to death?”
A second thin, humorless smile split the trader’s no-nonsense visage. His jaws worked redundantly, grinding on an invisible cigar. “Did you think I had only one box, night thief? I have a box full of boxes. Not all are home to the benign.” Casually, as if utterly indifferent to the consequences of his action, he tossed the box in their direction. Ehomba took a step back as it struck the floor between them.
And began, exactly as the portable tavern bin Grue had brought to light previously before them, to unfold.
No mirrors flashed the light of delectation from behind a bar attended by indulgent countermen. No lithe-limbed maids danced between tables bearing pitchers and goblets of imported libations. There was no cadre of good-natured celebrants to welcome the travelers into their company.
That did not mean that the box was empty.
As the box continued to open and its unfolding sides to multiply, a towering figure rose from its center. It wore heavy iron armor and had shoulders like a buffalo. The massive skull hung low on the chest, and mordant eyes blazed deep within the cold-forged helmet. A spike-studded club rested on one shoulder, and its thighs were as big around as Simna ibn Sind’s entire body.
“Brorunous the Destroyer.” Bin Grue announced the apparition’s arrival with a contented grunt.
A second figure emerged from the softly pulsing, inch-high platform generated by the ever-expanding box. Eight feet tall and thin as a whip, it leaned forward so that its elongated arms touched the floor. Resembling a cross between a spider monkey and an assortment of cutthroats Simna had once known, it held a pair of throwing knives in each hand and drooled like an idiot. A demented, homicidal idiot.
Bin Grue spoke again. “Yoloth-tott, Cardinal Assassin to Emperor Cing the Third of Umur.”
Other figures began to appear, massive of limb, effusive of arms, and maniacal of mien. They crowded together in the defiled space limned by the ichorous phosphorescence that spilled from the dilating box. Haramos bin Grue had a name for each one, though he did not call them out as if reciting a register of old friends. His tone was unimpassioned and impersonal, the same he might have used to itemize any inventory.
The result was a pageant of perversion, a bringing together of slavering, marching evil not to be found at any one time in any one place anywhere in the world.
“Behold,” he proclaimed flatly when the final apparition had been called forth and the box had unfolded its last. “No greater aggregation of murderers, butchers, and psychopaths is to be found anywhere. All gathered together for your consideration. They act only at the bidding of the master of the box that contains them, and I can tell you from previous experience that their extended suppression in a much-confined space does nothing to improve their already misanthropic temperament. At such times when they are freed from that confinement, as they are now, they’re eager to express their sentiments.”
Simna ibn Sind had drawn his sword. No coward, he was ready to stand and fight. But, looking at the awful assemblage of accumulated annihilation arrayed before them, he could not help but be less than sanguine about their prospects.
Still, there was something the cold-blooded merchant did not know.
“The sky-metal sword!” he whispered tensely to his tall, phlegmatic companion. “Use the sword! Draw down the wind from the heavens and blow these hard-featured horrors away!”
“In so confined a space that could be dangerous to all