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From: djb6@ellis.uchicago.edu (Dennis Brennan)
Subject: [NTY] Special delivery for the Il-Shar
Message-ID: <1993Aug16.053132.27392@midway.uchicago.edu>
Sender: news@uchinews.uchicago.edu (News System)
Reply-To: djb6@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1993 05:31:32 GMT
Lines: 66

Two more days of this infernal hood- I became ill and vomited from
the excessive heat; still they would not allow me to remove it.  What
a figure I might make at one of the Generican Envoy's parties- stinking,
unkempt, starving, utterly soiled and exhausted and miserable.  Perhaps
I should have stayed in Generica and submitted to that brattish Bismanian
meddler- I might not have had to endure such indignities as these.

From the din around me I guessed that we had arrived in a populous
place- that is, by the standards of this empty prairie.  The hood was
pulled and I squinted in the searing daylight.  When my eyes began
to focus I beheld a terrifyingly ugly woman holding a dagger at my
chest.  I cried in surprise and fright- tthis seemed to amuse the barbarians,
who laughed loudly.  The hag tore off my already raggedy garment
and with her bodkin carved a long scratch into my chest.  It was not
deep, but long, and blood immediately began to drip from the gash.  With
a finger gnarled like a hoary tree-root, the witch wiped a few drops
of blood from my chest and tasted them.  After this abominable act
she made some pronouncement to the assembled warriors, who cheered and
banged their spears against largeflaps of leather, producing a sound
like a thunderclap.  The hag then produced some herbs or powder from a
pouch and placed these materials in my wound.  I became unconsious.

I came to my senses quite some time later, for the ground was cold and
the moon high in the sky.  I was bound hand and foot to a post in
a ratty and filthy tent.  A young woman dressed in leather and skins
and with long straight black hair lay on top of me, licking the crusted
blood from my chest.  When she realized that I was awake she sat up and
stared into my eyes for an instant.  She was fair-faced and rather comely,
but the dried blood around her mouth augmented by the moonlight reflected
in her hypnotic, staring eyes made her look like some feral beast.
Grunting something incomprehensible she dug into my skin with sharp talon-
like fingernails, drawing blood again in my chest and shoulders.  She 
resumed licking these wounds as I faded back into unconsciousness.  In
my last delirious moments of wakefulness I fancied I saw her change shape
and become some kind of great cat-like creature, her rough tongue
simultaneously caressing my pain and mocking my helplessness.

I awoke with a start and found a youthful warrior flogging me on the
back and neck.  I was still bound, and naked, but facing downward with
my chin in a drying puddle of my own drool and blood.  I was harshly
pulled upward and liberated from the post but still hobbled by the 
bindings around my handds and feet.  Dragged from the tent I was cast
into the dust before an immensely huge and powerfully-uilt man sitting
on some kind of large transportable folding stool.  The man spoke with
a voice of monstrous charisma and power, as if every utterance from his
throat bespoke of the authority of the gods.

"I am the Il-Shar.  You-who-come-from-the-North, you will bear the
name Skuygd, which means That-which-eats-dirt-and-scurries-like-an
insect.  You wil remain the slave of the Shar and the Ch'Par for ever
and ever."

The Il-Shar grinned wickedly, his large eyes gleaming by the light
of a hundred torches and ten thousand stars over the desolate steppe.
From the shadows stepped the hag and the girl who had visited me in
the tent.  The hag gripped some kind of foul staff or rod, which she
waved over me as she incanted some strange and meaningless words.  The
young girl licked her lips like a demon and advanced.  Something like
a bright flash of light blinded me for an instant and I became oblivious,
except to... certain sensations which defy description.



-- 
Dennis Brennan
djb6@midway.uchicago.edu