Chapter 12: 'To Serve Kathool'

Shantar writhed in agony as a bucket of salty water splashed over him, stinging and burning in his many cuts and scrapes.

"On your feet, Hill man!"

The words echoed through the roaring in his head as he blinked the water out of his eyes. He stumbled to his feet, staggering and nearly falling. His arms were lifted over his head with a clanking of chains. Before he could realize what was happening, he was only one of a line of naked figures. Their manacles were hooked to hanging rings that tugged them forward through greenish gloom.

With a surge of horror, Shantar realized that he was within the cylindrical tower of one of Kathool's temples! The scene was one that few outsiders had ever looked upon and come back to tell about. Shadowy figures in priestly robes moved solemnly about to the accompaniment of distant chanting that grew ever louder. His fascinated gaze kept returning to where a brighter glow of green light marked the center of the temple, his shackles drawing him inexorably closer and closer to the light.

"So, the mighty Shantar finds himself going to amuse the God whose idols he mocked!" The oily voice chuckled out of the gloom. Looking up, he saw the fat yellow face of Shenfu, the village priest, leering at him from under a green cowl. "I had hardly hoped for such a fitting end when I banished you from HighVillage. I have followed your actions since that time with some interest. You seemed destined to hamper the plans of your betters, but that is all over now. May your strength earn you a long and painful career as a puppet in Kathool's dreams." The priest's laughter bubbled evilly through the gloom, fading as the plump priest waddled away on some priestly errand.

Hoarse screams rang out from the gloom ahead of him, ending in a splashing sound as his chains pulled him forward a few more feet. Green burning torches flared higher, throwing ragged flickers of light over a huge figure that squatted in the darkness, brooding over the scene spread out before Him. The crude idols of wood and clay that Shantar had seen had only hinted at what he saw now!

Crouched on a massive block of stone, its taloned hands and feet gripping the line of strange symbols incised into the smooth stone, the idol's body was an ugly mass of pouchy fat. Behind it spread vast bat like wings, but the crowning horror was the head. Where Kathool's face should have been was a thickly entwined mat of stumpy tentacles, each one ending in either a fanged mouth or a bulging crimson eye!

The line of sacrifices had approached close enough for Shantar to make out the litany that the priests chanted as each sacrifice was completed, words that were repeated over and over as the ceremonies continued.

"Praise to Kathool!" a strong voice chanted.

"May His sleep be long and deep!" thundered the response.

"In His house beneath the sea,"

"Dread Kathool lies dreaming."

"Oh mighty Kathool, accept this soul to dance through Your dreams, and when at last it has been absorbed into Your substance there shall be others to take its place."

"In His house beneath the sea, may His dreams never fade," the chorus responded, the words coming slower and deeper until they ended in a drawn out groan.

Shantar was close enough now that he could see clearly what the priests were doing, and even his toughened ego was wrenched, making him try vainly to look away. A screaming, struggling figure was being methodically cut and slashed until not a single square inch of her skin was whole, yet so skillfully was it done that she was left not only alive but fully conscious.

When the bloody process was finished, two husky priests unlocked the sacrifice's chains, lifting her bleeding body high above their heads. The chanting reached its climax as the writhing victim was cast into a crystalline tank of a liquid that glowed with greenish gold sparkles, falling silent until the deep voice began the foul litany again.

In the greenish light of flaring torches, Shantar could see the feebly struggling sacrifice stiffen and become rigid, floating motionless as the green fluid seemed to swirl hungrily about her. For a long moment, nothing seemed to happen except that the swirling golden motes within the green fluid became more frenzied. Then, the floating body began to change! First the red blood leaking from thousands of cuts faded. Then the skin itself began to disappear, revealing the muscles and veins beneath. The muscles and veins faded like mist under a summer sun until only the skeleton was left, surrounded by a grayish mist. The bones resisted the fluid's action only a little longer before they too melted away.

Shantar couldn't look away. All that was left of what had been a living, breathing woman was a naked brain and spinal column, surrounded by the ever finer tendrils of nerves that had once directed her body. Just below the forward thrust of the brain floated her eyes, staring madly out at the torches that burned green in the gloom. As the priests prepared the next sacrifice, the brain, too began to dwindle and shrink. Nothing was left but a tank of clear green liquid, its golden sparkles dispersed and quiescent. Another soul had departed 'under the sea'.

"Shantar!" He stiffened as his name was whispered in the gloom. "Don't look around, my brave one. Your Chenji is here to save you."

A slender figure in baggy green robes slipped around to face him. The oval face that gazed up at him from under its hood was even prettier than it had been the day she had come to warn him of danger, that day in High village. Prettier, but thinner, with dark shadows like bruises under her eyes.