The story so far…

Three Savage Land races – the croca’dyla, the arachni’adna and the aeria’akah – have been visited by the tragedy of cold-blooded murder. A mysterious man in a green cloak has visited each of the clans and, revealing himself as a blind tjati visionary marked by each tribe’s god in turn, has declared the perpetrator of these crimes to be a female with red hair clad in animal furs… a description obviously fitting Shanna The She-Devil!

Shanna herself is presently acting as a grudging guardian to a man named Benjamin Clements, an outsider to the Savage Land who is having second thoughts about trying to stake a new life in this hostile, tropical wilderness. Shanna and Ben have survived attacks by the croca’dyla and the arachni’adna, aided by Prince Iliago of the aeria’akah – an individual who once, ill-advisedly, kidnapped and imprisoned Shanna in an attempt to force her to be his breeding mate. Iliago is now suffering from serious wounds incurred in the battle against the arachni, and Shanna seeks to return to her jungle home to recuperate and to plan a counter-offensive against the enemy responsible for her predicament, the green-cloaked tjati.

But the tjati is merely a puppet of a far greater villainy, the disembodied spirit of an ancient sorcerer who wants Shanna dead. That dark wizard, empowered by a mysterious sapphire-onyx amulet, heralds from the long-distant age of Hyboria – and his name is Kulan Gath…

And now, the adventure continues!

“Eisha, Eisha!“

Martyllr’kaedr the equ’quagga – known, thankfully, to his friends as Marty of the Zebra People – was cracking coconuts with his forehooves when the sky fell in. Almost literally. As it was, being ensnared from above in a net of tightly woven swamp vines weighted down with animal skulls was bad enough, and when an alarming number of croca’dyla began slithering down from the trees armed with curve-bladed swords and hookwhips, that situation quickly became markedly worse.

“I no guilty!” Marty brayed, snapping hopefully at the net but knowing in his heart that his blunt teeth were useless against the sturdy vines. “I no owe money! It already broken when I found it! The baby not mine!”

“Cease your prattle, ssstripe-hide,” a nasty voice hissed at Marty’s ear. “We’re not interested in you. We want your mistress.”

Marty curled his long neck, his eyes wide as he stared through the shag of his black mane into the face of the enemy. King Frajk of the dyla loomed close, all blazing eyes and broad, flat snout crammed with teeth that were not at all blunt.

“Mistress?” Marty gibbered. “My heart belong to one woman only. Beloved Daphne…”

Frajk faltered. “Daphne?”

“Daphne. Of Scooby Doo, Where Are You? show of wonders.”

“Of… what?”

Marty nodded enthusiastically. “Stylishly drawn girl of splendid proportions, short lilac dress, pink pantyhose and green neckerchief, oh yes. Eisha, Eisha, and red hair of such delight…”

Another of the dyla soldiers stepped forward, brandishing his scimitar. “It’s insssane, my King,” he rasped. “Rabid, babbling foolishness. It can’t be true that this one associates with the She-Devil. We should slaughter it, before it spreads its disease.”

Frajk’s black eyes shone. “Yesss,” he snarled. “I agree. End it now, then, and—”

“The only thing ending today is this preposterous feud!”

The croca’dyla whirled at the sound of a woman’s voice in the jungle behind them and immediately set about that location with a flurry of hook-lashed whips and slashing blades. However, they were victim of simple misdirection; the owner of that voice was already on the move, slipping clear of the undergrowth at another juncture entirely and releasing Marty from his net with one cut of her own sword. By the time the dyla realized they’d been fooled, Shanna The She-Devil was astride the jungle path in their shadow, Marty scurrying to safety behind her.

Frajk turned, whip at the ready for another strike… but Shanna lowered her sword and held up a hand of conciliation, causing her enemy to hesitate. It was a bold gesture, especially as Shanna had already been dealt a nigh-fatal blow by these same adversaries earlier that day, but her stance was proud and her cool gaze unwavering. Despite himself, Frajk couldn’t help but admire the courage evident in those amber-shaded eyes. Reluctantly he held up his own scaled paw as his soldiers set to advance with murderous fury.

“You’ve come searching for me twice now,” Shanna said, coldly. “Now you’re in my home, terrorizing my friends? That’s just insolent.”

Frajk scowled at Marty. Marty snorted.

“Bad reptile disrespect Marty. Bad reptile disrespect Daphne. Shanna make you into handbag now…”

“Quiet, you,” Shanna snapped. “Didn’t we discuss this? Enough with the cartoons.”

Frajk snarled and made a move to advance but Shanna stilled him with an imperious glance.

“Listen to me. I know you’re proud, and vengeful. I know you won’t rest until you’ve punished me for the perceived wrongdoing I’ve perpetrated against you. But also know this, King: you’ve been duped. And, if you truly are the honorable species reputation claims you to be, you’ll listen to what I have to say.”

“She speaks the truth, Frajk…”

Two more figures emerged from the jungle in Shanna’s wake, a winged aerian supported by a smaller human male. It was Prince Iliago of the aeria’akah who had spoken. Frajk noted that this other enemy of the dyla people was severely wounded, his once-glistered flesh now darkened with necrosis despite Shanna’s best efforts to heal him with jujasi leaves. The dyla could rend him limb from limb with their snapping jaws, and yet here he presented himself, unarmed. Frajk was confused.

“The aeria’akah and the arachni’adna have also been set against the She-Devil, for atrocities she didn’t commit,” Iliago explained. “In each case she’s been implicated by a supposed vision… but doesn’t common sense suggest dire mischief at play here? Rather than a warrior renown for her decency and held in high regard by the majority of Savage Land races, suddenly becoming a vassal for cold-blooded murder…?”

Frajk’s eyes were pools of liquid darkness, his teeth bared. He and his fellows clenched their weapons and breathed as one, their resentment barely contained.

But, in those crucial seconds that followed… no blade was raised.

“Speak then, She-Devil,” Frajk hissed, eventually. “But be fair warned. If you can’t convince me of your innocence in this matter, then we shall slaughter you and yours where you stand.”

“You can try,” Shanna said, belligerent to the core, as always. “But first, a question. Do you happen to know where the man who caused all this is now? I’d like to have a word with that hooded tjati…”

The green-cloaked man scrambled through the jungle, his expression grim beneath the shadow of his cowl. The tjati had planned on encouraging the croca’dyla to slay Shanna outright but even before the She-Devil’s appearance it had become apparent that King Frajk was developing an immunity to the tjati’s magical coercion. Cutting and running had been the smarter option, especially as there was an alternative to the dyla, an even more lethal weapon to be brandished against his foe.

The arachni’adna, the children of Omm, could be found in the lost valley a half-day’s travel from here. Unlike Frajk, or Prince Iliago, the hideous Queen Heri’dii would be only too pleased to carry through with her plans to kill Shanna; the tjati just had to prepare her to take advantage of the confrontation that would surely now transpire…

WAR OF THE CLANS

Part IV: Shanna and the Sorcerer’s Scheme

By Meriades Rai

“You lie, human woman. You lie to save your putrid skin, but I will not be deceived…”

The citadel of Omm was located at the heart of the valley of the arachni’adna, a narrow gorge carved between two gigantic walls of stone to the far west of the Savage Land – a valley where no other race typically dared trespass, even those creatures as dim-witted as dinosaurs. The valley was a place of death, littered with the bones of those who ventured too close to the basin’s edge and were snared by the omnivorous ones who lurked in the silk-strewn shadows, scuttling back and forth on their many legs to protect their territory. The citadel itself was a towering edifice of stone and silk, entwined to create a scarcely possible construction that swayed in the faintest wind but which had nevertheless remained erect for hundreds of thousands of years, such was the strength of the delicately crafted webs that reinforced its foundations like steel girders.

It seemed incredible that Shanna The She-Devil had breached the defenses of this sanctuary once, to allegedly slay the seven daughters of the royal bloodline; that she and a ragtag party of allies had now encroached a second time was sheer insanity.

Queen Heri’dii of the arachni swayed forth from the pit on six long, black legs, two more legs raised in hostile triumph, her swollen black abdomen pulsing with her excitement. Her many eyes glittered in the starlight overhead, for night – the time when the arachni’adna were at their most potent – had fallen upon this savage world, and the Queen was adamant that her prisoners would not live to witness another sunrise. There were five individuals snared in the webs of the spider-women: Shanna herself, her friends Benjamin Clements and Marty, then Prince Iliago of the aeria’akah and King Frajk of the croca’dyla. Once she’d convinced Frajk that she was innocent of the charges against her Shanna had journeyed to the lost valley to persuade the arachni’adna of the same; after that she’d planned to learn the identity of the true villain of the piece, the green-cloaked tjati. It was a strategy that might have worked had the arachni been inclined to listen to reasonable argument, but that wasn’t in their nature at the best of times. And then there was the issue of the tjati himself, currently loitering in the Queen’s shadow, his triumphant smile disguised by his hood but obviously evident to all those staring in his direction nonetheless…

“The birdkind gifted you wings to attack our kingdom from the sky, circumventing our defenses so that you might slaughter my seven daughters,” Queen Heri’dii skittered. “I don’t know why the children of Sobek would also ally themselves with you after so many years’ delicate peace between the arachni and dyla clans, but this is obviously a declaration of war disguised with cowardice. The arachni’adna will not be made fools.”

“And yet that’s exactly what you’ll be if you don’t listen!” Shanna barked, straining in frustration at the webs that presently bound her hands and legs. “You think we’d just walk in here and allow ourselves to be captured without a fight if we weren’t telling the truth?”

“It’s a trick, a human trick—”

“Listen to me! It’s him, the tjati at your side, insidiously orchestrating this entire charade. He’s bewitching you somehow, just as he duped the dyla and aeria’akah. But you can fight it, Queen. Just allow yourself to believe…”

The man in the green cloak stepped forward, shoulders stooped and arms spread in a show of innocence.

“I’m just a humble servant of justice, my lady,” he said, with dark sincerity. “You can’t commit such terrible acts of murder and expect to get away with it.”

Shanna scowled, every muscle corded as she pulled against her restraints. “You’re a liar,” she seethed. “Show yourself. Your true self. I want to look upon the face of my enemy…”

The tjati paused, then reached up and pulled back his hood. The vaguely humanoid face that was revealed was shocking not because of his disfigurement – the silk stitching about his eyes – but because it was otherwise unremarkable, and unrecognizable. The man smiled, almost sadly.

“I don’t know him,” Shanna said, softly. She was bewildered. “Why would someone go to such great lengths to snare me in his plot, to see me dead, when he’s a stranger to me…?”

“Hisss eyes looked different when he appeared to my people,” Frajk declared, sullenly. He was affronted that he’d been fooled so readily, regardless of the sorcerous enchantment that had dulled his instinct and allowed the deception to take hold. “Is this the sacred mark of Omm, then?”

“It was different for us too,” Iliago murmured. “We believed all too readily. This man is sly indeed, and bold, to risk the wrath of the gods by impersonating their vassal.”

“Your gods haven’t troubled the Savage Land in a long time,” Shanna said. “No offense, but it’s true. It would be easy for an individual of power to cloak himself in outdated traditions, to spin your faith for his own benefit…”

She turned her attention back to Queen Heri’dii, choosing her words carefully.

“This tjati claimed a vision that implicated the arachni’adna in the slaying of the croca’dyla King,” she said, her amber eyes trained upon the giant spider rearing before her. “All hereditary enmity aside, Queen… did you order such an assassination? Because if you didn’t – just as the dyla clan didn’t engineer the death of the Shaman’tai of the aeria’akah, and the bird-men knew nothing of the slaughter of your children – then doesn’t doubt also exist as to my guilt in all three incidents?”

The Queen’s legs twitched and her mandibles clacked, oozing venom. Frajk’s black eyes narrowed.

“It’sss no use, She-Devil,” he hissed. “Regardless of what she believes, she’s going to kill us all anyway. Enemies and uneasy allies alike, gathered in her clutches… she sees this as an opportunity. She doesssn’t care for the truth.”

Alongside Shanna, Iliago bowed his head. His flesh was still darkened with necrosis and his wings were limp in his silken bonds, but he was alive – for now. Alive to understand the horror of this situation.

“There will be war,” he whispered. “A war between the clans. And no species will emerge unscathed. Sides will be chosen, battle lines drawn…”

“Which is what he wants, no doubt,” Shanna snarled, eyeing the blind tjati with pure hatred. “But the question remains, why was I chosen, specifically, to be the catalyst? Simply because I’m an independent party, not affiliated to any one race?”

“Perhaps,” Frajk rasped. “If I’d sssucceeded in killing you in the jungle in our first meeting we would have then sought revenge on the arachni. There is ancient history of bad blood between Sobek and Omm; both clans would have readily embraced the conflict. But the arachni would also have pursued vengeance against the bird people, and the aeria’akah would have attacked us in our ssswamps—”

“Be silent!” Queen Heri’dii shrieked, swaying forward and looming above her captives with a nightmarish scurry of thick, bristling legs. “I’ll not listen to your pathetic falsehoods…!”

Shanna raised her eyes to the twilight skies then, and smiled. “Then I guess we’ll have to use methods that will get your attention,” she breathed.

Alerted by the distinctive advance of beating wings, Queen Heri’dii and her hordes of arachni’adna looked up to witness the arrival of an unusual cavalry: a legion of aeria’akah, but not just aerian alone, for many of the soldiers were carrying croca’dyla in their arms. As the bird-men passed overhead they released their reptilian cargo and the dyla descended in a blur of heavy shadows, lashing out with tails and swords and whips as they landed in the midst of the spider-women, creating an instant melee of alarming proportions. The arachni responded immediately to this unexpected assault but their speed and savagery was no match for careful planning, and they left themselves predictably exposed to a counter-attack from the rear by the aeria’akah on their return swoop.

Queen Heri’dii hesitated, her multiple eyes blazing as she realized that she was surrounded. Frajk and Iliago breathed a mutual sigh of relief as they glanced at one another, and then at Shanna. Shanna merely looked on, her gaze shrewd, her intellect and instinct honed, as a troop of dyla slithered forward and began hacking at her silken bonds with their scimitars.

“Well, this is where it gets interesting,” the She-Devil told her allies. “An uneasy truce, or all-out war? Thank you, the pair of you, for convincing your clans to back me up on this before we came to the valley; always good to have a contingency plan. But now we best be ready for anything, boys…”

As soon as she was free Shanna stalked forward, collecting a sword from the closest dyla and advancing upon the tjati in the green cloak. Curiously the man didn’t seem to be bothered by her approach, and not just because he was blind.

Shanna opened her mouth, intending to bark a further command for her enemy to reveal himself…

…but in that moment the tjati simply collapsed, crumbling to dust before her eyes, returning to the fragments of lifeless bone and rotting flesh he’d been created from. It was only in that instant that Shanna realized the terrible truth.

“It was an effigy,” she whispered, now more bewildered than ever. “A construct, a device, nothing more. But if this was just a puppet, then who was controlling it…?”

No. No!

In his cave of skulls, the disembodied essence of the nigh-immortal sorcerer Kulan Gath swirled and cavorted in indignation that his plans were being unraveled at the last. Was it cruel misfortune? Was he cursed…?

No. No, it was the will of the gods, and they were a precocious breed, regardless of whichever pantheon they were aligned to. And the She-Devil, she wasn’t merely lucky. She was clever. She was bold. He had underestimated her resourcefulness, believing her to be little more than a savage. And she fought like a tiger, yes, but she was so much more than that. She cultivated friendships despite herself, she inspired faith and trust in those who rarely traded in such commodities, and her steely nerve under pressure was almost inhuman.

Gath had been right to recognize her as the prime potential host for his eternal enemy. His mistake had been not to engineer her slaughter outright, instead preferring to bring about her downfall as part of his greater plan, to instigate war in the Savage Land and to then gather the shattered and bloody remnants of the various clans beneath his own tyrannical hand once that apocalyptic conflict had run its course. If, however, each tribe – aerian, arachni and dyla – were now forced to curb their enmity then his subterfuge would be exposed.

Still, the endgame was not yet done; there was one final sacrificial play to make, and the result could yet prove catastrophic indeed for Shanna and her friends.

Kulan Gath smiled grimly to himself, and spread his ethereal arms wide.

The interior of the pit of skulls began to reverberate with the thunder of drums, overcoming the steady heartbeat that had been prevalent until then.

Blood began to flow like rivers. Bones began to crack.

Be mine, Gath hissed. Become me. Become my weapon. And strike a blow to all hopes of tribal reconciliation…

“Eisha, Eisha!” Marty complained, raising his hooves to the sky as croca’dyla and aerian worked about him and he was released from his prison of silken webs. “Why I not child of a loving deity…?”

Shanna eyed the quagga unsympathetically, rubbing blood back into her sore wrists. “Because your goddess is a pagan relic who’s likely more interested in chewing clods of grass and swatting flies with her tail than paying attention to what’s going on down here,” she said. Marty’s eyes glistened.

“So harsh,” he brayed. “She-Devil so very harsh.”

“The She-Devil isss apprehensive,” Frajk hissed, watching his ally closely. “And not just because the tjati was revealed as a living mask. She knows how much dependsss on the next few minutes.”

Marty nodded sadly. “Jinkies and zoinks,” he sighed. Then he turned when he saw the human, Benjamin Clements, grinning at him. He’d grown so quiet Marty had almost forgotten he existed.

“Jinkies?” Ben said. “That’s Scooby Doo, right? Man, I haven’t watched that since I was a kid. Where’d you pick that up?”

“Prague, in Republic of Czech,” Marty said, as if that explained everything. “Jeepers! Velma! Daphne! I heart Daphne…”

“You know she’s a cartoon character, right?”

“You’re all just a bunch of lousy toons,” Shanna said, irritably. Marty stuck his tongue out and waggled his hooves.

Ben laughed, glad at a moment of humor – however ill-advised, considering Shanna’s mood – to relieve the tension. Although he was still utterly terrified by the notion of being surrounded by a race of giant spiders who’d wanted to cocoon him in silk and feed off his decaying flesh for the foreseeable future. He was just about to say something else to Marty when he felt a sharp pain in his skull, causing him to wince. His hand went instinctively to his chest as it always did, and his fingers smoothed over the familiar shape of what he wore beneath his shirt: his necklace. Although amulet would probably have been a better description…

A second later the pain ebbed… and then intensified one hundredfold, causing Ben to sink to his knees with a cry, clutching his head with one hand and his chest with the other. The agony… the agony… like his blood was flowing freely and his bones were cracking…

“Benjamin?” Shanna cried, kneeling beside him. “What’s wrong?”

“Something… something happening…”

Shanna scowled, then saw something curious. In the folded neckline of Ben’s shirt, there was a mysterious glowing, a soft blue light that was brightening with every passing heartbeat. And that heartbeat was loud and irregular, almost like… drums?

Shanna tore open Ben’s shirt. In doing so she exposed the artifact about his throat that had remained hidden up until then – a sapphire-onyx amulet and a gold link collar. The dark gemstone was burning now, pulsing with the same rhythm as the drums. And Shanna could hear disembodied laughter, seeming to emanate from inside Ben’s skull…

Ben gasped and raised his head. His eyes had turned pearly white, his teeth now bared. There was blood on his lips. Without warning he snatched out a hand and grabbed Shanna about the throat, his grip far stronger than the She-Devil might have anticipated.

“All this time, by your side,” hissed an unfamiliar voice, spilling thickly from Ben’s mouth. “I should have just overpowered this human’s irritating resilience and manifested through this body, killed you with my own hands…”

Benjamin Clements grinned, but behind the young man’s eyes, powered by the sapphire amulet at his throat and alive as a parasitic spirit in his skull, it was Kulan Gath who roared in triumph. Victory, snatched from the jaws of defeat! Now, all he needed to do was wring the She-Devil’s neck before—

“Gath. My eternal enemy…”

Mirroring Ben’s enforced transformation, the voice that now issued from Shanna’s lips was also patently not her own. It was deeper, harsher, and rough with some unfamiliar cadence. There was something subtly different about her stature, also; she no longer held herself gracefully, as an athlete dependent upon reflex and speed of thought, but was now gripped with the bodily gait of a brawler, flexing her arms and hefting a sword with a sense of purpose. She no longer wore animal skins but a bustier, skirt and boots of scale mail and leather. Her eyes were green instead of amber, and her hair…? Her hair was redder. The red of flames.

“No!” Kulan Gath spat, through Ben’s mouth. “No, it’s not just! You can’t be here, not yet, not—”

“How many times have I killed you across the span of ages, wizard? And yet still you come back for more. But, you should know by now, whenever and wherever you resurrect yourself, I’ll never be far behind.”

The woman raised her sword. Marty, Frajk and Iliago all looked on, nonplussed.

Marty cocked his head. “Shanna…?”

The woman with the fiery hair smiled darkly. “No, striped one,” she breathed. “Your friend is gone. For now her body belongs to another warrior, from a time long past, the eternal enemy of this wretch who has caused you such strife…

“Now, I am Red Sonja, The She-Devil!”

To Be Concluded…