by Phil Tucker
Audsley shrugged. "Perhaps not. Perhaps all this has been forgotten over the centuries, lost like so much other knowledge."
"Does... You're a Noussian; you should know. Does this invalidate all of Ascendancy, then? Is the whole religion a lie?"
Audsley bit his lip, brow lowered in thought. "No, I don't think it does. At least, it's never been clearly stated that one's soul passes through the Solar Portals en route to your next city of rebirth. As such, the Portals aren't a necessary component. Rather, they allow one to grasp the scope and scale of the journey one's soul must undertake before passing through the White Gate. Were the Portals to close, that visceral understanding that's made possible by the experience of traveling from city to city would be lost - but the soul would still complete its journey in time, regardless."
Tiron shook his head in wonder. "Thousands of demons, bound in Starkadr. And they're safely bound? Not about to escape?"
"No, I believe they're safe. The demon I killed was trying to free the greatest one, but I stopped it in time."
Tiron sat up straighter. "And if you hadn't?"
"Ah." Audsley's face went stiff. "I'd rather not contemplate that outcome. Perhaps that demon alone would have been sufficient to end the empire. And if not, it could have quickly freed others. With Starkadr under their control, they would have been able to use the Portals to attack the empire from all directions at once."
"By the Black Gate," whispered Tiron. The full scope of Audsley's accomplishment was starting to hit him. "And you stopped... that."
Audsley took off his spectacles and stared down at his bloody, dirty shirt for a clean spot to wipe them on. He gave up and returned them to his nose. "Well, I suppose I did, at that. Yes."
Tiron rose to his feet and bowed low before the magister. "The empire may never know or appreciate what you did, Audsley. But I do. Thank you."
"Oh, of course. Think nothing of it. I was just, um, focused on helping you and Lady Kyferin with your tasks." Audsley beamed and blushed at the same time. "Think nothing of it, I beg of you."
Tiron grunted and passed his hand over his face. "All right. Then let's tend to Asho and the Vothaks. That's what they call them over there – their pet Sin Casters. Vothaks. Supposedly they have medusa blood running through their veins, but for all that they're good people. They helped me save Iskra from a political assassination." Tiron knew that he was rambling, that the shock and exhaustion was getting to him, but still he managed to find amusement at Audsley's horrified expression. "Here, I'll tell you all about it."
So saying, he clapped Audsley on the shoulder and led him toward the others, feeling for the first time that the magister was an equal, a man with whom he could speak freely. Just as much a warrior, in his own way, as he was.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Tharok opened his eyes to a world of shadow split by beams of sunlight that plunged down from the ceiling at identical oblique angles. Motes of dust glittered like gold in those columns, gently turning. He was still alive, though so weak he felt as if he couldn't move. Something had roused him, pulled him from the depths of slumber.
The texture of the cavern's silence had changed. No longer was he alone. Beyond the small cinders of his dead fire and the burned male medusa lay the nesting cavern's entrance. It was empty. He could barely make out the great circular confines of the space beyond.
Tharok sought to push himself upright, but froze as pain lanced through him. His back was snarled into a mess of wounded immobility.
The sunlight that speared down through the narrow slits served only to make the darkness all the more forbidding and impenetrable. Tharok forced himself to grow still. That he was still alive spoke volumes. The medusa could have killed and eaten him while he slept.
A slow rattle whispered out from the depths of the cave, echoing around him like the most terrible of caresses. Tharok's instincts locked up, screaming at him to run. That sound had haunted the nightmares of his kind for longer than recalled history. When he heard it, he knew he was prey. Only his exhaustion and augmented force of will kept him from fleeing, shrieking in terror.
Again came the rattle, the slow and languorous shake of a tail, and then he saw movement, something vast and sinuous moving beyond the columns of light. It glided briefly into view, then went back into the darkness.
A hint of coils, a subtle hiss, the caress of scales on rock.
Any hope he might have harbored of controlling the medusa through his newfound ability was immediately discarded. This was too alien, too powerful, too other for him to attempt to meld with it. There was no chance of imposing his will upon the medusa.
Once more came the rattle, and this time the medusa moved forward, closer to the light, skirting its edges so that Tharok could see just a hint of her upper torso, erect and statuesque where it flowed up from the body of the great snake. The coils undulated as she approached. They were brilliantly colored: eye-stinging yellow along her belly, blending into the most lurid of crimsons up her sides and giving way to pitch black on the overlapping carapace running down her spine.
His attention, however, lingered on her upper body. Sculpted into a vision of female perfection, she was naked, powerfully muscled, her skin the color of darkening coals, a smoldering, dusty red with a fan of soft yellow scales rising up across her abdomen and between her breasts. A mass of snakes wreathed her face, hissing and undulating as if they were caught in underwater currents. And her eyes... Her eyes were as pitiless as the sun, a glaring nullity that burned his vision so that he was forced to lower his gaze, bright motes scoring his sight.
She could have killed him then with ease, he knew; could have opened the membranes past beguiling and given him oblivion, but somehow he knew that she would not. No, for his trespass and sacrilege she would demand a greater accounting.
The medusa stopped between two shafts of golden light. Her body seemed about to incandesce to flame between them, so mesmerizing and vivid was the coloration of her scales and skin. She reared up before him like a cobra, and he fought to raise his gaze once more. He settled on looking at her wide, sensuous mouth, whose lips were broad and bronzed and pulled into a silent snarl.
"You rouse me from slumber with the very ashes of my mate," she said. Her voice was all alien overtones, the hiss of snakes blended into glory most ruined. Tharok shivered, watching as she bunched her coils behind her as if preparing to spring forward at him. The snakes around her face hissed their displeasure. "From dreams of fire I awaken with the smoke of my own kind around me. Are you not sufficiently close to death that you must tempt my wrath?"
Despite his pain, his loss of blood, his lethargy and dullness of mind, Tharok found his body being stirred to desire. The sight and sound of her evoked from him a primal yearning to submit, to surrender himself to her, to allow her to devour him from within in every way imaginable.
He closed his eyes and forced himself to speak. "I want you to heal me. Then I want you to follow my orders and do as I bid."
Silence followed, broken only by the whispering hisses of a hundred miniature snakes. Then came the sound of great speed and a frenzied rattling. The air keened as if it were being whipped, and the column of stone above his head exploded as the medusa whipped her tail through its mass, shattering it into sharp-edged blocks that sprayed out in a fan of destruction to his left. Tharok was clipped by the blow and sent tumbling from where he had been sitting, pain suffusing him so fully that he cried out and nearly lost consciousness again. He came to a stop on his back, dust filling the air around him. Stones rocked and settled back into place, pebbles clattered to the ground, and he heard the furious, sizzling spit of the medusa's rage as she slid up to where he was lying, loomed over him and strafed his body with her gaze, leaving trails of fire where her eyes touched.
"Ask yourself," croaked Tharok. "Why I have done what I have done? How I have known to do it? What has brought me here, in the state that I am in?"
The medusa undulated back, her rattle whispering onc
e more, and he opened his eyes, jammed thick with dust, to gaze up at her. Her mouth was set, her eyes half-lidded. A coil of her body passed through a band of sunlight and conflagrated into violent color before slipping back into shadow.
"Speak, then. Only curiosity abeys my vengeance."
Tharok licked his lips, and with a grunt of pain forced his way up into a sitting position. Consciousness was an errant beam of light through the shattered cavern of his mind, the darkness of pain threatening to swamp it at any time.
"I don't know for how long you have slept, but the world has changed since last you hunted. There has been no mention of a live medusa during the course of my life. No word of your kind anywhere."
Tharok coughed again and slowly scooted back to the closest column so that he could rest his back against it.
"I am the war chief of the Red River clan. I wear Ogri's Circlet, and have wielded World Breaker. You must know of Ogri, the Uniter, and what he did. What I offer you is this: freedom from this cave. Freedom from this wilderness. Come with me, and you will be part of my inner clan. A Grand Convocation is being held in three days. With your help, I can return to it and claim all of the tribes as my own. Then, with countless warriors at my disposal, we can begin to bring the rest of the world to heel. You will have as much prey as you desire. You will be at liberty to scour the mountains for more of your kind. And eventually, not too far from now, you will be able to join us as we descend against the humans to exact justice."
Despite his terror, despite how important the moment was, Tharok felt his eyes beginning to close. Not even his great frame could take so much abuse. He heard a faint rattle and forced his eyes open once more, blearily trying to focus. The medusa was moving backwards, her body swaying from side to side. It was as if a fire was being pulled away from him, depriving him of its warmth. No wonder we used to worship them, he thought blearily. I'd be on my knees if I had the strength.
The medusa was silent, and he almost slipped away. He almost felt his spirit tug free of the thin chains that still held it to his body. But there was more to be done. He opened his eyes and saw that the medusa had paused near the erstwhile fire that he had built, and had reached down to take up the body of the male medusa and hold it before her. There was no emotion on her face – no nostalgia, no pity, no more cold calculation.
She dropped the body to the ground and turned to regard him.
"I've not much time left," he said. "You must reach a decision soon or lose me."
She came gliding up toward him, her great yellow snake's belly an alarming vibrancy in his vision, her rattle whispering softly, and loomed over him again. How many kragh had lain before her in this way in their final moments, only to be petrified or mesmerized and led down here to this cave to their doom?
"Long years have I slept," she said, her voice a husky murmur. "The configuration of my home has changed. Many seasons have passed since last an ugrych awoke me from slumber to mate." The words were like candlelight viewed through fevered eyes, felt now almost more than heard. Tharok's chin descended toward his chest as she went on. "I shall test your words; shall venture forth to determine their verity. You will await my pleasure, o lost and solitary war chief of the Red River. If I find you false, then your end will be a pyre equal only to your vanity."
Her hands reached down for him, their touch warm like that of sun-heated river stones. His head lolled back, and he was raised into the air. Fear sought to awaken him, but failed. He was too near death. Up he was raised, and then lips were pressed against his own, lips as soft and supple and textured as the finest leather, a hint of fangs beyond them, slivers of bone impossibly sharp. Then he felt her tongue, uncoiling and muscular, strangely shaped, insinuating itself into his mouth.
Tharok groaned and then stiffened in her grip as, one by one, the small snakes that grew from her scalp reached down to bite him, to sink their small teeth into his skin, and his face and shoulders and scalp caught fire from their venom. He felt pain and ecstasy, the sun boiling over in his heart, her mouth on his, her hands holding him aloft with effortless power, and his pain and fatigue became delirium, became tinctured by mad desire and terror. He began to writhe in her grip, the agonizing venom coursing through his body, setting his blood to seething. His bones felt as if they were being immolated, dipped one by one into magma, and still she went on kissing him with a forceful, dominating passion that he could not resist, the small snakes writhing free now and brushing his face with their leatherine bodies.
How long they remained so, he could not say. He lost himself in the rushing roar of a pain that purified, a madness that consecrated. His muscles and joints and skin and talons, his tusks and knuckles, the pit of his stomach and each and every arching rib, the depths of his lungs and the vast and ponderous beating of his heart – all of it was drenched in flame and, instead of being reduced to ash, was left hale and whole and vital once more.
When she finally dropped him, he had long since ceased to think. He lay on the ground, straining, hands opening and closing spasmodically, staring but seeing nothing. His breath came in erratic gasps. He occasionally swallowed convulsively, and for a while his heels drummed on the floor as his body shivered violently.
By slow degrees the fire receded, as if it were a tide pulling back from the shore, leaving him weak and small and insignificant without its beatifying caress. When he was able to blink and pull his thoughts about himself, he lay still, slowly piecing together the most tentative of memories. Nakrok. Ambush. Flight into the darkness. Waterfall, river, and cave.
The next thought hit him like an avalanche.
Medusa.
He was instantly up and on his feet, his heart pounding as old kragh instincts roared to life. His head snapped from side to side, searching for sign of her. There: in the far reaches of the cavern, a faint glimmer of vermillion color. With a cry he threw himself away, thinking of only one thing. Flight.
Reflex caused him to reach up to touch the circlet. It was gone. He stumbled, stopped, his mind still raging at him to run, to keep going. The circlet was gone! No wonder he felt as panicked as a child. Without it... He shivered and stepped behind a pillar and closed his eyes.
There was no escape.
A realization hit him then: the pain was gone. He looked down at his body, at his hands, and realized that he stood healthy and whole. Further, his skin was no longer a green so dark it neared to black. Now it was fully black, as if he had been charred in some blasphemous fire. He held up his hand in wonder, turning it in the faint afternoon light. Black, with faint red highlights on the raised surfaces. He gazed at it in wonder, and then slowly curled his hand into a fist. Never had he felt so strong.
Drawing some measure of comfort from that, he took a deep breath and peered around the column, only to cry out in panic and duck back out of sight. The medusa was gliding toward him, weaving a sinuous and unhurried path between the stalagmites. He ground his forehead against the rock, trying to screw up the courage to step out from behind the pillar and face her, to raise his chin with the dignity and pride that should be his. But he could barely breathe. These monsters had been feeding off his kind since the first kragh had gazed up at the Sky Father. It was all he could do to stand still as he listened to her approach.
"Are you so reduced without this circlet, little kragh, that you must cower from my sight?" Her voice was redolent with amusement.
Tharok, shivering, forced himself out from behind the stone, each foot coming slowly as if he had torn it free from sucking mud. He took one step, two, three, and found that he couldn't go any farther. This fear was irrational, but he was unable to speak.
"There, now. I find your manner much more in keeping with that of your kind." She was holding the circlet in one hand, playing with it as if it were a toy. "But what use have I for a common kragh who dares not meet my gaze? If you are so diminished, then perhaps I should return this to you." And with a casual flick, she sent the circlet flying toward him.
Tharok r
eached out convulsively, caught it and immediately set it on his brow. He reeled as knowledge and confidence and power drenched him, and then took his first true breath since his healing. Yes. He stood straighter, allowing his shoulders to relax. He was healed. No, he was more than healed; the medusa's kiss had done more than merely close the wounds on his body and restore his strength.
"Thank you," he said, feeling calm now. "You have gifted me my own life. I shall see to it that I return the favor a thousandfold."
"It is most strange," she said, still sounding amused, turning her head one way and then another as if seeking the most advantageous position from which to view him. "For I do not know if I am addressed by the kragh, or through the kragh by the circlet itself. Have you any knowledge, kragh, as to what it is that you wear?"
"The circlet of Ogri," he said, eyes narrowing.
"Your Ogri wore that circlet, it is true, and I remember how it bolstered his might and extended the reach of his claws. But, no, it never truly belonged to him. It would be more accurate to say that he, in fact, belonged to it."
"Then... no. I don't know its history. But answer me this. Why did you not keep it for yourself? Why toss it so casually back to me?"
The medusa laughed, the sound low and mellifluous. "Why would I wish to wear that band of cursed iron? I am pleased with being myself, and do not wish to be other. But enough. The evening fast approaches. Come dusk, we will go forth. Tell me now of your plans so that I may improve on them."
Tharok turned his attention upon the very lucidity that allowed him to do so and considered the circlet. It predated Ogri. There was little surprise in that. The medusa, he thought, must be very old indeed if she remembered Ogri himself. Still, those were thoughts for another time.
She was staring at him. He could feel the heat of her gaze on his face. Steeling himself, he raised his eyes to meet hers...
Only to see her unguarded eyes for the first time. Gone was the punishing blankness akin to gazing upon the sun. This was the gaze that killed. Her eyes were bronze, with vertical slits of glowing crimson down their center. Behind the bronze still fulminated a potential for destruction, but for now he realized he could meet her gaze without fear.