Releasing a pent breath, he resumed his slow stroll around the chamber. He noted that the Sil’ath warriors had stolen around the cavern perimeter and reached the captives. Valkarr knelt among them in hushed discussion while Innikar and Sariel stood over them. It would be several minutes before his unhurried pace brought him near enough to them to exchange quiet words. It took Amric long seconds to locate Bellimar, as he did not want to crane his neck back and forth searching for him and thus risk drawing undue attention to his position. He finally discerned the vampire standing at the edge of a pool further around the room. He stood tall and straight with his cloak folded tightly about him, little more than a sliver of night in the cavern’s gloom. His attention appeared to be absorbed by something in the glowing waters.
“The city will fall this night,” the Nar’ath queen assured him. Though she had to be aware of the presence of the others within the chamber, she still seemed to pay them no heed whatsoever.
“You sound very certain of that.”
“Even now my forces gather there,” she said. “When night falls, the city will bare itself to us, and by morning’s light my minions will have harvested them all.”
He glanced upward through the opening far above and onto the tortured sky. The oppressive blanket of clouds had walled off the sun at last, and the light that poured down now into the chamber was a dim grey shroud. He wondered how long remained until nightfall. Under normal circumstances there would be several hours of daylight remaining, but if this cloud cover rolled over Keldrin’s Landing as well, a serviceable darkness-and the accompanying assault-might come all the sooner.
“Why bother with the city at all?” he asked. “If, as you say, conquering this world is truly not your goal.”
She gave a long and sibilant hiss, but he could not decipher whether the sound indicated pleasure or annoyance. “We are after bigger game, as you must realize by now. But we must build our forces, and maneuver them into proper position.”
“Again you speak of ‘we’, and yet all I see here is you.”
She uttered a keening, triumphant shriek that he realized was a laugh. “Then you have only begun to look, arrogant one. My sisters and I have grown in strength slowly over the centuries, recovering in secret from the blow you dealt us so long ago. And had you not activated the Gate and begun to draw upon this world, it might have taken many more centuries before we were ready to strike at yours. Now our hives fill the wasteland, draining the land dry of life, and we build our forces to hurl against you. The time for hiding and preparing is almost done.”
He paused, reeling with the implications of her words. He quailed at the thought of many more monstrosities like this one, each building its own army of black creatures, their sinister hives pockmarking the land like a spreading disease. They were stealing the beings of this world and converting them into their own blasphemous parody of life, and growing stronger all the time. Very soon, if it had not come to pass already, they would need fear nothing on this world. The Nar’ath queen leaned forward, her long black claws rasping against the stone, as she mistook his partial comprehension for something more.
“Did you truly think that you had eradicated our kind? You, whose avarice granted our existence in the first place? We are a growing cancer on the ley lines that feed your world. We know your addiction. You cannot survive without it, and yet the more you draw upon it, the stronger we continue to grow.”
Her tone grew more heated with every word, and he could see her huge form tensing and swelling.
“We have adapted, Adept, evolved over these many centuries that we might more perfectly hunt your race. In your arrogance and greed, you have given us the means to strike at you in more ways than you even realize.”
“Calm yourself, foul one,” he said quickly, striving for a dismissive tone. “You are not ready to pit yourself against the might of the Adepts.”
She gave a deep, grating chuckle, still poised on the verge of action. “I hear ‘we’, and yet see only you,” she said, twisting his own words and casting them back at him.
He threw back his head and boomed a laugh that echoed eerily around the vast chamber, warping the sound until he did not recognize it as his own. “And did you truly think that I came alone?”
It had the desired effect. The Nar’ath queen hesitated, eyes widening to dart suspiciously around the cavern. Her malevolent gaze slid over the Sil’ath warriors, whose position he was nearing now, and dismissed them as inconsequential. She tilted her head upward and froze. Thalya stood upon the rim of the opening high above, silhouetted against the silver sky, her bow drawn and leveled at the creature. Amric hoped she had nocked one of her ensorcelled arrows, as he had a strong suspicion that nothing less would suffice. Another head peered over the edge; Syth’s, by the shape of it, though the height was too great to pick out his features.
The queen’s ridged skull swung back toward him. “That is no Adept. You bring the fleshlings of this world against me? What game are you playing at?” The last was almost a murmur, more to herself than to him. Good, he had her confused, and she was suspending action against him once more, at least for the moment.
His circuit of the room had finally brought him to the cluster of captives. His heart sank when he saw that all seven of them were human, not a Sil’ath form among them. Valkarr rose and stole to his side with a shake of his head. He stood so close that the words that followed were more breath against Amric’s ear than actual sound.
“The men say they are the last to survive,” he whispered. “They have seen no other Sil’ath, and no prisoners have been removed from this chamber.”
“Can they all walk?” Amric whispered back, barely moving his lips as he spoke from the side of his mouth.
“Some were injured in the taking,” Valkarr said. His dark eyes glittered with barely restrained fury. “But they do not lack for motivation. They are ready.”
“Good. I will continue around. Take them swiftly up the stairs when the moment allows.”
The Sil’ath warrior inclined his head in the barest of nods and stepped away to hold a hushed conversation with Sariel. Amric resumed walking, looking over the captives as he went. They had the look of soldiers, hard and rough-hewn, but they were also pale, haggard, haunted. Their sunken eyes met his as he passed, and he saw reflected there the specters of what the men had been through since their capture. I can promise you only the chance to live or die on your feet, as men, fighting for your lives, he thought. Nothing more, but let it be enough.
“Adept.”
It was Bellimar’s voice, the timbre of it hollow and strained. The vampire was staring at him from the edge of the pool he had been studying, the soft green glow writhing along the underside of his features. Amric moved toward him, holding himself to an unhurried stride. The Nar’ath queen, hissing to herself, twisted within her enclosure to follow his progress around the room.
Bellimar thrust out a hand as he approached. “Your knife.”
Amric eyed him, but drew his knife from his belt and passed it over without comment. The old man knelt by the side of the pool, watching the dark forms churning within its viscous, luminescent depths.
“Do not touch the waters,” he warned. “They are anathema to living flesh.”
His hand darted out with lightning speed, fastening to one of the cocooned forms and dragging it toward him.
“Tell me,” Bellimar said, “does not the shape of this one strike you as familiar?”
Amric felt a tightening sensation in his chest as he gazed upon the wrapped figure. At first it looked no different to him than the others, just another long, amorphous shape twisting and heaving with corrupted vigor. Then he saw it. Against the folds of soaked cloth-like material, he could pick out broad shoulders and powerful arms pushing at the silken bonds, a narrow waist flaring to flexing legs that were not quite jointed correctly for a man, and behind that a thrashing appendage that suggested nothing so much as a Sil’ath tail. There was understanding and pity i
n Bellimar’s eyes as he held the knife poised, looking a question at him.
“Do it,” Amric said between gritted teeth.
With a flick of his wrist, Bellimar swept the knife through the coils around the head. A glistening black wedge-shaped visage thrust its way clear, ebon eyes rolling against the sudden bite of the air. Amric’s breath caught in his throat, lodged there, and became stone. Prakseth. Burly Prakseth, jovial and honorable to the last fiber of his being. First to defend, first to comfort. Oh my friend, what have these monsters done to you?
Those malignant orbs darted from Bellimar to Amric. There was recognition there, of a sort, but not the kind he would wish. That glimmer was not a greeting for a familiar friend, but rather a sighting of prey. The jaws parted, and the mouth began to work furiously, open and shut, open and shut, as if shrieking without sound. Amric closed his eyes, sickened. When he opened them again, an unspoken agreement passed between him and Bellimar.
The vampire tightened his fist in the folds of material and raised the body partway from the waters as easily as if that hand had been empty. Amric slid backward a step and spun on his heel. One of his swords rang free with a sound like the chime of a bell. In a blur of motion he whirled, and his blade hammered down in a gleaming arc, cleaving through the black skull and into the chest. With one jerking spasm, the figure went still. Amric dragged his sword clear, and Bellimar laid the body gently at the edge of the pool.
Amric panted, struggling to rein in the rage that threatened to overwhelm him. He had known what to expect, he reminded himself. He had seen it happen to that hapless man when they arrived, and from that instant he had feared the worst for his own. In point of fact, he had known for weeks that death might be all he found on this mission. Soldiers die in battle, the rational part of his mind insisted, and it was, after all, far from the first time he had lost friends to the callous whims of war. It was never easy, would never be easy. His teeth ground in helpless fury. So why did it feel so different this time?
A wave of heat washed through him, and his vision went white at the edges. He fought it back, trembling and shaking his head to clear it. This was no time to succumb to whatever strange illness was plaguing him. He needed to retain control, as there were still lives to save. And lives to avenge. His fist tightened around the hilt of his sword until his knuckles creaked.
He threw his head back, gasping for breath, and found the captives climbing the stairs. Some moved under their own power, scrambling weakly up the twisting steps. Others were pushed or half-carried by his Sil’ath warriors. He had to buy them a few more minutes. Whatever he chose to do with his own life, he could not commit theirs to the reckless act of vengeance that was burning at him from the inside. He met Valkarr’s stricken gaze as the Sil’ath hesitated, then ducked under the outstretched arm of one of the men to hasten him up the crude steps. He saw, Amric realized. He knows, and yet he does what must be done. I can do no less.
“What desecration is this?” the Nar’ath queen screeched. “Have the Adepts grown so craven that they cannot face us directly now, but instead resort to preying upon our young?”
He whirled toward her, baring his teeth. “They are not your young,” he spat. “They are not yours at all. They are my people.”
Her head drew back in confusion. “Your people? What matter to the Adepts if we harvest them before you harvest their very world? And what matter to such inconsequential beings? They are like blades of dry grass before the spreading flame. Their tiny lives are not their own, either way. At least we offer them existence, and purpose, where you offer only annihilation.”
The queen leaned forward once more, her eyes narrowing to burning slits. She swept out one arm in a violent gesture toward the retreating captives. “And when did the Adepts become concerned with the fates of such lesser beings?”
As before, he was not certain what reply to make and so he stood, seething with anger, and made none. This time it gave him away.
“False Adept!” she hissed in sudden accusation. Then she paused, cocking her head to the side. “No, you are indeed an Adept, for I can taste your power from here, and it stands apart from the weak magics of this world’s inhabitants as clearly as the full silver moon from the flickering stars. But you do not react as an Adept should, and you hesitate when no Adept would.”
He stood motionless, staring back at her. From the corner of his eye he watched the painstaking progress of the Sil’ath warriors ushering the weakened, stumbling captives up the stairs. His mind raced, trying to think of what sufficiently cryptic statements he could make that would buy them the time they needed to reach the top.
“You would test your strength against the Adepts?” he asked again, putting a measure of disdain in his tone when a fierce part of him wanted only to hurl himself against her. “Tread with care, dark one.”
“Perhaps you are a youngling,” she mused as if she had not heard him, “still uncertain of your powers. Whatever the reason, you seem unable or unwilling to use them. Long have the Nar’ath wished for the day we would test our newfound strength against the Adepts, and long have I wished for the day I would taste the peerless life force of your kind.”
The shoulders of the Nar’ath queen bulged as her body bowed and tensed, and a spider’s web of cracks shot through the stone surrounding her. Her eyes were narrowed to a painfully bright razor’s edge of eldritch green as her head slowly lowered and extended toward him.
“I think, Adept,” she said, “that this will be that day.”
With a scream of primal fury, she surged upward and burst from her containment. A sound like a peal of thunder tore through the cavern as huge shards of rock exploded outward. Amric threw up an arm to shelter his vision against flying debris. He had a split second in which to see the retreating group on the stairs high overhead, staring downward and frozen in shock. Through the rain of rock and the billowing cloud of dust, he had a fleeting moment to glimpse a mammoth serpentine form fringed with countless angular, grasping arms, writhing free of the gaping hole in the ground. Then the Nar’ath queen was hurtling toward him, and he had time for nothing else.
CHAPTER 20
“I’m telling you, there has to be something guiding them.”
Horek paused with his fork midway to his mouth. “What’s that you say, lad?”
The younger guard shot a glance at him over one shoulder before returning his attention to the narrow window. “They were all wild, fierce creatures. What else would possess such a horde to attack in unison? Something is organizing their efforts, it has to be.”
Horek groaned and shoveled the meat into his mouth, chewing noisily as he drew the back of his other hand across his bearded chin. “Not this again, lad,” he said. “Can we not share a single watch without flogging the same old discussion?”
At the window, Sivrin’s square, clean-shaven jaw tightened. “It can’t be that old a topic,” he muttered. “The attack came only a few days ago, and there has not been another since. Do you not find it strange?”
“A swarm of maddened, magical creatures throwing themselves at the city walls? Of course it is strange. Hell’s breath, the whole business is strange. But you’ll not find me complaining that they have not returned.”
“They will return,” Sivrin insisted. “And mark my words, I will wet my blade in their foul flesh, if I am not stuck on watch again here at the southern gate instead of the eastern one on that night as well.”
“The southern gate is every bit as important an assignment, lad. The next attack could come from any direction, not necessarily the east.”
“Bah, you don’t believe that any more than I do,” Sivrin said. “The eastern gate is where the action will be. The Captain knows it as well. He has over thirty men at the eastern gate, and just a few of us here.”
“Six of us,” Horek corrected him. “Two at the gate, two in the room below, and the two of us up here to man the portcullis. That is more than a few. You saw what those fiends did to the great wooden door
s of the gate itself. Quick action on the inner portcullis may be all that keeps them out of the city streets next time.” He gestured at the huge, squat winding gear affixed to the stone floor on the other end of the room, its thick system of chains trailing upward into slots in the wall. “It is an important duty, lad, whether you enjoy it or not.”
Sivrin heaved a sigh and shook his head. “Do not remind me, Horek. Even on the off chance an attack does come to the southern gate, we must man the device and cannot even respond directly. I am doubly cursed. Is the Captain determined to keep me from proving myself?”
The older guard tapped the fork against his lips as he regarded the other fellow. He was supposed to be training the lad, taking him under his wing and sharing the benefit of his long years of experience. He could not look upon that earnest, boyish countenance, however, without feeling dismay at how much like children the new recruits looked to him these days. So young, and so eager to prove themselves, one and all. Sivrin devoured every old story Horek had to tell, and hungered for more. It did not seem to matter that some tales held only meager scraps of truth; the lad had ears only for glory and bravery, and seemed not to hear at all the horrors, the pain, the warnings that laced each retelling.
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