Witches of Kregen by Alan Burt Akers Page A

night.
    If this fragile scheme I had concocted was going to work I’d have to make my way through the throng gathering before the altar and the image, ease along to the rear, and then sort out whatever and whoever lay beyond.
    The tunnel held a dank, stale smell which the incense worsened. The place struck me as eerie and unhealthy. The altar had been set up where a side passage led off into darkness. The opening, half blocked by a rotting wooden gate, held no interest for me, and I eased around the other side where the opposite tunnel, forming a cross, showed lights. Voices came from beyond hanging curtains. Three guards stood there, clad in brown and white, bearing spears, and they looked at me keenly.
    I used the formula words on them, letting them understand I was a visiting adherent of high rank. I wished to speak with the chief priest on a matter of the utmost urgency, and if they wished to retain their privates they’d better let me through at once.
Bratch!
    They bratched and saluted, and I passed through the opening in the curtain into the antechamber beyond.
    More curtains concealed what lay to the left hand side; but the sound of voices and the clink of equipment told me the acolytes and the butchers were in there preparing themselves for the night’s tortures. To the right the curtain was half drawn and I caught a glimpse of men and women with the grander masks of the under-priests. Straight ahead lay my goal.
    The two guards here, both apims, did not wish to let me pass, so I had to put them to sleep standing up. I caught them left and right handed and eased them to the ground, which here was covered by a silver-patterned carpet. I did this not to break their falls but to prevent their noise alarming the occupant within.
    When I pushed through he looked up, the mask in his fingers, his robes already flowing about him.
    “What—?”
    His face was fleshy from good living, veinous, vinous, too, I daresay. He wore many rings, a habit I detest. He was firmly built and around my height, and I cut him down without a word. I caught the mask as it toppled from his nerveless fingers, and he fell on his face onto the carpet and his blood stained out across the bright silver threads.
    His robes fitted well enough. The rings were a nuisance; but they had to be slid on as part of the full regalia. His own sacrificial knife, sharp, curved, I picked up with great distaste and slid into the sheath ready for it. Then I strapped on his mask in place of the one I’d worn. When I was ready I took a breath, picked up his staff with its head fashioned like a leaping silver leem, all wedge-shaped head and eight legs, snarling and vicious and well-designed to impress the gullible.
    I shoved the curtains aside and hauled the two guards in by their ankles. I hit ’em again, just to keep ’em quiet a little longer, and then stalked out to stand at the far curtains. In only a few moments the acolytes and under-priests trooped out and the procession was formed and ready to go.
    The closeness of the stink from incense, the heat of tapers and torches, the brazier fire burning with its ghastly implements heating up, all this discomfort had to be pushed away. There was a job to be done. I’d chosen this hair-brained way of going about it, so there was just the thing to do.
    I, Dray Prescot, the Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy, dressed as a chief priest in the debased Cult of Lem the Silver Leem, led out the procession of abominations.
    Marching out front and center I raised both arms. Imposing, these debauched chief priests, no doubt about that... The noise of the congregation quieted. I addressed them. Oh, yes, I knew their stupid fancy rigmarole ranks and titles, and could work them up as I’d seen high priests do before, until they were ready for the Great Word. But, this time, and, too, of course because I probably was not performing in exactly the way a chief priest would go about conducting the ceremony, the Great Word was