Sand of the Soul

by Voronica Whitney-Robinson

  The mummy with the sword made blind slashes at Steorf, which he parried easily. The half-elf was another matter. Steorf had to continue to thrash his head from side to side to avoid her raking fingers. He could feel warm blood trickle down the side of his neck where the female had bitten through his earlobe, and he was momentarily surprised that he had enough fluid in his body left to bleed.

  “Enough!” he shouted.

  Fannah turned at the sound of his voice. When he saw her, an idea came to him. Steorf began to swing harder with his weapon and forced the human mummy backward.

  Thrust after thrust, the creature lost more ground until it tripped on the stone support for the brass brazier and dropped its weapon. The creature stumbled back and fell into the flames. It writhed from side to side and managed to jump up as fast as its hulking body allowed. It made one staggering step before the flames ran up the length of its body. The mummy tumbled to the ground and rolled once before burning completely. An acrid smoke filled the chamber.

  Steorf had no time to admire his handiwork. The half-elf managed to get her claws into his chest wound and tear it further. Steorf bellowed in rage and slammed his back, with the half-elf still on him, into the metal doorframe of the chamber.

  There was a sickening crack, and when he moved forward the half-elf released her grip and slumped bonelessly to the floor. She toppled forward and Steorf could see that her back had split open. To his horror, she still made a swipe at his boot with one hand.

  In absolute repulsion, he brought his heel down on her hand and reduced it to powder.

  “You won’t be clawing anyone with that,” he spat, moving away from the shuddering mummy.

  Fannah was cornered by three undead, and she swung her torch in a protective arc in front of her. Steorf saw her predicament and moved to help her. He raised his broadsword with two hands and swung across the mummies like a thresher would a field of wheat, his rage sparking his last reserves of strength. Each mummy was cleanly sliced through the midsection, and they toppled over like a child’s set of blocks. Steorf looked at Fannah and saw that she was relieved to hear the mummies’ crash, but there wasn’t a hint of fear on her face. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her free of the torsos that still tried to clutch at her feet.

  “We’re almost done,” he told her, and she smiled.

  “I knew we’d make it,” she replied.

  “How?” he asked her.

  “Because this is part of what I saw within the gate,” she answered simply.

  Before Steorf could reply, he saw another mummy come up behind Fannah with a raised weapon.

  “Duck!” he shouted to the Calishite and roughly shoved her aside.

  He parried the monster’s blow and brought his knee up into the creature’s groin. The force of the blow doubled the mummy up, and Steorf smashed the hilt of his broadsword into the thing’s skull. The mummy’s head exploded in a puff of dust and rot.

  “Behind you,” Fannah warned him. “I hear something.”

  He turned in time to see the Mysterious Lurker staggering toward him with his hands extended.

  Steorf was becoming tired, and his reflexes were too slow. Before he could bring up his sword, the old priest wrapped his large hands around Steorf’s throat. He dropped his sword and tried to claw the Lurker’s fingers away, but to no avail. The Lurker’s grip was like steel, and Steorf started to hear his own blood pound in his ears, and small patches of black danced in the corners of his vision.

  The undead Lurker’s eyeless face remained emotionless as he swung Steorf around by his throat and bent the young mage backward toward the brazier as though he wanted revenge for his burned comrades-in-rags.

  Tazi carefully started down the stairs, not knowing where the necromancer might be in the darkness. He must have hidden himself somewhere, she reasoned, since Steorf and Fannah hadn’t seen him along the stairs. She slid with her back against the stone wall, smearing Ciredor’s graffiti with her leathers. After she had gone down a few steps, she paused and listened. She thought she heard a whisper.

  At the third level, Tazi stopped her descent and cautiously peered around a corner. She was certain she’d heard was a low, melodic whisper and that it came from that floor. She gripped her sword with both hands and walked sideways, using the walls as shields whenever she could.

  Unlike the east tower, this floor was not empty. She could see that Ciredor had transformed this level into a den of luxury, not unlike how he had kept his secret rooms in Selgaunt. There was a decadence to his selections.

  As Tazi turned a corner, she could feel velvet drapes on the walls. He had lined the entire room with the sumptuous fabric and blotted out all the exterior light. Furs were thrown haphazardly on the floor, and she secretly thanked him for his opulent taste. Everything was so well padded, there was no way he could hear her approach.

  Nestled in the center of a pile of large pillows, Ciredor was sitting with his legs crossed, but Tazi could see that his heels rested on top of the opposite thighs. She had seen Cale assume the pose once when she had caught him deep in his meditations. She realized that Ciredor, who had his back to her, was not actually sitting on the pillows but floated a few feet above them. She thought she caught a glimpse of the purple gem twinkling just in front of him.

  He’s mesmerized by the thing, she thought. He doesn’t even hear me coming.

  Tazi padded closer, holding her breath. She moved her blade back and prepared to slice his head off.

  “But I do hear your heart beating,” he spoke aloud and rotated around to face her.

  A flash of green burst from his finger, and Tazi was knocked across the room to slam against the wall. She crumpled in a heap, and Ciredor unfolded his legs and stood to his full height.

  “I always hear your heart, sweet Thazienne.”

  He moved over to her, the gem winking in the candlelight behind him.

  Steorf was nearly unconscious as the Lurker began to lower his head toward the flames. The first strands of his blond hair touched the fire and the smell of his own burning body snapped Steorf back to awareness. He tried chopping his hands down on the Lurker, but the mummy was unfazed by the blows. Steorf couldn’t think of anything else to try and vaguely wondered what had happened to Fannah. He dropped his arms behind his head to strike the Lurker one more time when one of his fingertips brushed a rod of some kind.

  Nearly unconscious, Steorf wrapped his fingers around the object and realized it was the poker Tazi had left in the brazier. With his last remaining strength, Steorf brought the red-hot poker up over his head and stabbed the Lurker through one of his eyeless sockets. The metal sizzled as it slid easily through the desiccated flesh of the one-time priest of Ibrandul. The Lurker flailed his arms about and tried to draw the burning rod from his head.

  Steorf withdrew the poker, and as the Lurker raised his arms in one last attempt to kill him, the young mage snarled, “This is for Asraf!”

  He stabbed the priest through the heart.

  “Revenge does taste sweet after all,” Steorf whispered.

  The mummified Lurker fell to the floor and squirmed like a bug impaled on a study board. He tried to pull the poker out but the hot metal ignited his purple robes.

  The Lurker fell still as the flames consumed him.

  Steorf leaned against the stone support and tried to catch his breath. He surveyed the room full of corpses and rotted bones. The fetid smoke stung his eyes, but no tears came.

  He rubbed a hand against his bleeding chest and whispered, “Is this what you want for me, Mother? A life filled with death all in the name of justice?”

  There was no one left to answer him, and he suddenly realized Fannah was missing.

  Steorf looked around the room, but she was not amongst the fallen, either—then he saw that she was outside on the parapet, with the last remaining mummy.

  “Hold on!” he cried as he searched for the passageway outside.

  When Steorf made his way out, he saw that Fannah had her
dagger drawn but she was standing calmly. The mummy had also stopped and Steorf thought it looked as if they were regarding each other in the torchlight.

  As he got closer, Steorf let out a startled gasp. The last mummy was his old adversary for Tazi’s affection: the elf, Ebeian.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” Fannah asked.

  “Yes,” Steorf whispered. “Somehow Ciredor collected his body and reunited it.”

  The eyeless elf stood and turned from Fannah to Steorf. Even though his dried, leathery face wore no expression, Steorf couldn’t help but feel the elf was beseeching him somehow, asking for something.

  Steorf ran his tongue over his cracked lower lip and finally said, “Maybe I can save him. Maybe there’s some way to reunite his soul with his body.”

  He wracked his brains for a spell that might accomplish it.

  “Ciredor would know,” he realized.

  Fannah stopped him with one word. “No,” she said.

  At the sound of her denial, the mummified elf lunged for Fannah. She dropped both the dagger and the torch and accepted what was to come.

  Steorf screamed at her to move as he sprang at the elf. The young mage’s massive size compared to Ebeian’s lifeless shell was enough to bowl the mummy over the railing of the parapet. Steorf leaned over the wall with one hand extended, as though to catch his friend, and he watched as the elf fluttered like a dead leaf to the sands below. He hit the ground with a hollow thud, and Steorf could see by the blue light of the sphere that Ebeian had crumbled to dust.

  “No,” he whispered, and hunched over his shoulders.

  Fannah came up behind him and placed both her hands on his back. He turned at her touch and caught her slim hands in his. When he spoke, his voice was choked with emotion.

  “Why didn’t you let me save him?”

  She freed one hand and stroked his cheek.

  “Don’t you see?” she told him gently. “You did free him.”

  “There is no one to save you now, little Tazi,” Ciredor told her sweetly.

  Tazi blinked hard. The blow she had taken left her dazed. Ciredor squatted beside her, grabbed her hair in his hand, and yanked her head up to stare into her sunken, green eyes. She could feel her terror rising, and once again felt like the battered woman in his cellar two years ago.

  “I did so prefer you with the longer locks,” he said. “You are fortunate and don’t even recognize it. Women with black hair are favored by Shar. They wear their hair long and free to honor her. You should do the same and count yourself lucky.”

  He released his grip on her and she slumped down.

  “Never mind,” he told her, turning away. “I’ll take care of the details later. You’ll be a good girl and just lie there, won’t you? I really can’t afford for you to disturb my plans this late into the evening.”

  He turned back to stare at her crumpled form.

  “And you’re the one who’s going to stop me? Did you really think my goddess would allow someone like you to ruin my plans?” he asked, and kicked her in the side.

  Tazi curled up protectively and clutched her ribcage. Ciredor laughed and walked back to his stone.

  Through a haze of pain, Tazi could see Ciredor reach out a trembling hand and stroke the jewel.

  “It’s almost time, and with every sign you send me, beloved Shar, I know that you shine your dark favor on me. I know it,” he finished fiercely, then started his low chanting again.

  Unknowingly, Ciredor had helped Tazi. When he first flung her into the wall, she had been fighting to stay conscious. With the injury to her side, that was no longer a problem. As best she could guess, Ciredor had broken at least one rib, and every breath was like a knife twist in her side. However, that the pain gave her something to focus on.

  Coughing up blood, Tazi placed her hands flat on the ground and pushed herself upright. The room swayed, but she forced herself to focus on Ciredor.

  As she struggled to her feet, she heard him whisper, “The time is at hand.…”

  He clutched the stone to his chest and marched past Tazi. Without so much as a backward glance he started to climb slowly up the stairs.

  Tazi seized her fallen sword and staggered after him on shaky legs. She found Ciredor on the stairs and charged up behind him. With a scream of rage, she tried desperately to slash at his back, her pain making her foolish and reckless. Ciredor ducked and whirled to face her. With the glowing gem clasped to his heart, he backhanded her with his right hand.

  Tazi’s blade flew out of her hand and knocked one of Ciredor’s small statues from its niche. She lost her footing and tumbled over the stairwell, hanging over the thirty-foot drop by one hand. Ciredor hummed the rest of the way up the stairs.

  Tazi watched the statue fall, as though in slow motion, and smash to pieces on the main floor. The sense of déjà vu was overwhelming; suddenly she was dangling between the rooftops of Selgaunt, watching her crystal prize smash to bits in the driving rain.

  The prize I lost, she thought sadly.

  She felt her fingers slip as Ciredor’s voice drifted down.

  “Where are you, my darling Fannah?”

  Tazi’s head fell back, and she screamed in rage and defiance.

  “I will not let you kill her,” she spat.

  Somewhere deep within her she found the strength to swing her leg up and hook onto the railing. She dragged herself up onto her stomach, and the pain of her broken rib flashed through her like a white heat. Panting on the landing, her knees bloody and her hands raw, Tazi had another recollection.

  This time she was back in the cellar in Selgaunt, battered by Ciredor and in pain from her ring of protection as she foiled his attack. What she felt at that moment was the absolute determination and courage to defeat him. She felt it then and reclaimed that feeling now, the one memory she couldn’t own during her ritual with Fannah. She rose to her feet and ran up the stairs screaming the mage’s name.

  Tazi burst into the lookout chamber in time to see Ciredor toss his beloved jewel into the flames. It hung there, suspended, and pulsed like a beating heart. The room was awash in a purple light. Fannah and Steorf rushed in from the parapet, too late to stop the dark necromancer. Ciredor stood, transfixed, in the glow of the gem, and finished his heinous chant. When he was done, there was an electric charge in the air. Everyone was riveted.

  The pulsing grew, and a single black tendril squirmed from the gem. It was absolute in its blackness, but purple scintillated along the edges. It writhed toward Fannah. Tazi watched as the distance closed between her and the fell manifestation. Fannah looked at Tazi with her ice-white eyes and grabbed the black strand.

  The tendril pulled her soul into the gem, and Fannah’s body collapsed backward.

  Tazi screamed in pain. Steorf was a picture of unbridled rage as the poison in his system burned away the last veneer of rationality. He ran to Fannah’s side, and with one look Tazi knew she had lost her Calishite friend.

  While Steorf howled in anger, Tazi screamed, “No more! The death has to stop here!”

  She turned to face Ciredor.

  The dark mage was a sight to behold. Bathed in the amethyst glow, his face was almost beatific. Tazi could see that he was caught up in a rapture of desire and hope. The word resounded in her mind over and over.

  He hopes, he hopes, he hopes …

  “Now you’ll come for me,” Ciredor whispered. “You’ve taken my last gift, my crown, and now you’ll take me.

  “It is no less than I deserve,” he finished, lost to his own desires. “I am ready to serve you, my queen.”

  Something snapped within Tazi. Even as Steorf struggled to get to his feet, his fury making him blind to everything else, Tazi moved into action. Before either man knew what she was planning, Tazi shoved the enthralled necromancer toward his precious rock.

  “I’m certain Shar will take you with open arms!” Tazi shouted. “After all, you carry with you the only gift she could ever refuse: your bright and shining hope.�
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  The necromancer stumbled toward the gem but twisted to face Tazi just before touching the flames. Dozens of inky tendrils shot out of the stone. Each one latched onto Ciredor like a leech, claiming a different part of his body, and whatever he was about to say to her was lost.

  One by one the tendrils started to pull back into the gem with a piece of the necromancer’s flesh in its grasp. His screams were deafening. Blood poured out of every orifice, and Ciredor fell to his knees, weeping bloody tears. As the sated tendrils melted into the gem, new ones snaked out to demand another piece of the fallen mage. Before his consciousness faded away, Ciredor locked eyes with Tazi, and she was certain that the last thing to flicker within his black orbs was fear.

  When there was no more of the mage left to feast on, and the last of his blood was lapped up, the tendrils retreated into the stone—but that was not the end of it.

  Tazi was certain she could see one purple eye regard her from within the soul gem. She stood her ground, and two new onyx strands slipped from the stone. She could see one move to Steorf and the other came for her, but unlike what they did to Fannah and Ciredor, these strands of black were gentle and hesitant. Tazi flinched as the one moved to her forehead, but its touch was light and almost caressing. She could vaguely see that the other tendril approached Steorf in the same fashion then she saw no more.

  She was engulfed in utter darkness. Everything about her was cold, her skin no longer ached with its horrible burns, and she no longer noticed the stab in her ribs. Though she seemed to be alone, Tazi could sense a fell awareness in the dark with her. Then she felt rather than heard a manifestation of the goddess Shar.

  I have many things to offer you, Thazienne Uskevren. I would have given them to the necromancer but he proved wanting.

  Why do you offer them to me? Tazi asked the presence.

  Because you know me so well. With you, it is an instinctual understanding. And who better than one from the house of Uskevren to offer my gifts to?

  What do you mean? Tazi questioned.

  I feel the anger burning within you, a darkness to rival even the fallen mage, Ciredor. All I ask is that you give in to your feelings. Let me soothe and nourish your hurts and pains. They are such a part of you and have taught you so very much.