PART III
SYNOPSIS OF THE THRILLING PARTS THAT WENT-BEFORE:
Dorgla, Emir of Joungfrou, upon realizing his court had been infiltrated by the deadly Filthy Folk (who had been smuggled into the kraal within giant pomegranates ostensibly brought by the Slave Trader Koung as oblations) sent back through all of time for a mercenary who could venture through the Seven Valleys of Pain to seek out and kill the Tainted One, not realizing it was she, his own mother, the breeder of lies, the teller of sighs, the wind-woman who had herself sired him out of anguish and wedlock. Dorgla's seeker-beam plucked the dissipated rum-runner Aaron Hortsmann from his bunk in the Saigon cocaine-parlor, even as the renegades who had been trailing him in an attempt to regain their forged rice-quota books, found him and closed in for the kill. Horstmann materialized in Dorgla's ante-chamber, out of phase, only half-substantial in Dorgla's alternate universe. Insubstantial as a wraith, Horstmann found himself half-man, half-shadow, even more aptly equipped to serve Dorgla's needs than the Emir had hoped.
Given the Ring of Silence and the Whip With A Million Eyes, Horstmann -- amoral and without reasons to refuse -- agreed to seek out The Tainted One, slay her, and return with the bagged eyes of the demon, in exchange for which he would be given super-normal powers in the world Horstmann had left behind. Riding the West Wind, Horstmann entered the first of the Seven Valleys of Pain, the dreaded Gulf of Weariness, where even the onyx birds that flew overhead were consumed with fatigue and plummeted to the ground to be swallowed whole by the living soil that sucked and roiled in darkness eternal.
Horstmann, in shadowy insubstantiality, fell prey to the fatigue, plunged forward and was swallowed up. Black viscousness surrounded him. His very fiber of ego felt torn and ripped by the madness that lived within the soil. The struggle was a short, inexpert one. Horstmann succumbed.
NOW! GO ON TO THE THRILLING PART III!!
"Rogoth!" Horstmann screamed, as he freed himself by dint of sheer will-power. "Rogoth!" And he burst out into an underground cavern of such size that the far walls were shrouded in mist and dampness.
Then, he saw it ... the real menace of this place of death.
The Golden Thing that lived in that cavern.
Horstmann settled himself, and unshipped the Whip With A Million Eyes. "Come, desolation, come filth, come, I await!" He cried, in a voice not his own.
And from the depths, from the darkness, it came.
DON'T MISS PART IV IN THE NEXT ISSUE!
-- Harlan Ellison
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
Data entry by Judy Bemis
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