City Under the Sand: A Dark Sun Novel (Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun)

by Jeff Mariotte

  “It’s not for you,” Siemhouk said again. This time she sounded nervous, and Aric realized they were really in trouble. She had acted like she could control this thing that she had helped unleash. If she couldn’t, then they all might be doomed.

  “Whatever I desire is mine,” Tallik said. His voice boomed, echoing off the massive walls surrounding them. He laughed, and his laugh shook the trunks of the agafari trees. “I desire power, so I take it. I desire vengeance, against the world that turned on me, that summoned me here and then imprisoned me, and I will have it.”

  Aric held out his sword, but its point was closer to the demon’s waist than his throat.

  “Kill the demon!” Mazzax shouted from nearby.

  Good idea, Aric thought. If only I could.

  4

  The demon extended his hands again, and his tentacles. If he sucked more power from the assembled templars, Aric didn’t want to know how big he would get, how strong.

  So far, this plan had not worked as he’d hoped. Any moment, Tallik might start killing, destroying, seeking his vengeance.

  With little to lose, Aric stepped forward and sank his blade in the demon’s body.

  The sword burned. Aric could barely hang on to the grip, it grew so hot. The demon tilted his head down to look at Aric as if he were an insect, some sort of biting pest he could swat away.

  Aric drew the sword out, and saw Tallik flinch. He thrust it in again, through the demon’s waist. Pulled it out before it was too hot to touch.

  “I-I’ll start with you, then,” Tallik said. He curled up a tentacle and unrolled it quickly, aimed at Aric. When it hit it would knock Aric from the dais, possibly kill him.

  Aric sliced through it, and the tentacle’s tip fell wetly to the dais floor. The rest of it curled away again, regrowing the severed part as it did.

  “You don’t like steel,” Aric said. “You were imprisoned beneath tons of steel for all those years, and there’s a reason why. You can’t stand it.”

  The demon raised clawed hands and brought them toward Aric.

  “Aric!” Sheridia cried, from the ground behind the dais, Myrana by her side. “We’re with you!”

  He didn’t know what she meant, but suddenly, his blade glowed, much as the sculpture of Kadya had. Not with the same result in mind, Aric hoped.

  He struck at Tallik’s hand. His blade sliced flesh and the demon jerked his hand away.

  Heartened, Aric dropped into a defensive position. As long as the demon attacked him physically, he could defend himself. Sooner or later, though, Tallik would launch a magical attack. At that time …

  He didn’t want to think about that.

  Stab him.

  He heard the voice, Siemhouk’s voice. But he heard it in his mind, not through his ears. He had already tried stabbing. It hurt the demon, although possibly no more than it hurt Aric. Steel bothered Tallik, but could it kill him?

  Stab him, Aric!

  Siemhouk’s voice sounded in his head with more urgency than before. She knew more about this kind of thing than he did. He drew his sword back and Tallik swatted him with the back of his hand.

  The blow knocked Aric flying off the dais, into the crowd of templars. He crashed into some and fell to the ground amid a tangle of limbs and bodies. He lay there for several long moments, stunned by the impact of the demon’s huge hand. His sword had been flung from his hand.

  Aric shook his head. Blood sprayed from his nose and lips. He touched his jaw, which was tender, and wondered if it had been broken. He held his medallion in his fist, letting the steel give him strength, and he reached toward the sword. It skidded across the stones into his open hand.

  The templars didn’t attack him, but they backed away, clearing a space and eyeing him as if he might suddenly go berserk. The real danger, though, was Tallik, up on the dais. He was reaching out to the templars again, drawing their power into himself, growing ever larger. Templars seemed to shrink as Tallik stole their life force. Faces wrinkled, flesh puckered, shoulders stooped. Those who had been young moments before suddenly looked like old women.

  Ruhm, Amoni and Sellis clambered onto the dais to stop him, but Tallik batted them away easily.

  Then Tallik left the dais, charging into the midst of the templars. He lashed out with fists and tentacles. He squeezed a templar until her ribcage cracked and caved in, tore the head off another, swept a third’s legs out from under her and stomped on her skull when she fell. Templars blasted him with spells, but he simply drank in the magic aimed at him and grew more powerful still.

  That won’t work, Aric. Siemhouk’s voice in his head again. She remained on the dais, watching the carnage with a gaping mouth. Only steel can stop him. You must stab him again.

  Aric tried to work through the panicking swarm, heading toward Tallik even as templars tried to flee in his direction. He didn’t think Siemhouk’s idea would do anything but get him killed. He didn’t have any better ideas, though. And if Tallik could so easily get the best of hundreds of templars, then he couldn’t be allowed to move through Nibenay and the rest of the world.

  My daughter is right, Aric. This Aric recognized as the liquid voice of the Shadow King himself. Stab the demon with your new sword.

  Aric wondered for an instant how Nibenay knew his sword was new.

  A templar ran into him, blind with terror, pushed off his chest and raced around him. Others bumped him as they rushed past. Blood pooled on the flagstones, bodies were everywhere, and Tallik continued his slaughter.

  Then Aric understood. The voices sounding his head, Siemhouk and Nibenay—they weren’t just speaking to him, they were inside him, seeing everything. The journey, the discovery of the trove of steel, the knowledge that the demon was imprisoned beneath it, the escape. They knew about Kadya accepting the demon into her—wanting it there.

  And as if that understanding turned a key, he realized that he saw flashes from their minds as well. They had both known that Kadya carried a demon inside her. Siemhouk had known it all along, had sent Kadya specifically to ensure that the demon would be brought back to Nibenay, where she believed she could control it. Nibenay had found out later, and decided to let his daughter’s plan play out, thinking he could make use of the demon when Siemhouk failed.

  Now, however, both were frightened. The demon’s power grew with every passing moment, as it sapped the magical energies of Nibenay’s templar wives. Already Tallik was beyond their control—the only question remaining was whether or not it could be destroyed.

  Aric was their best hope—and not much of a hope, at that. But he was someone they were happy to sacrifice.

  And his hand was full of steel.

  Another templar crashed into him, light as a bird. She fled, and then it was Aric and Tallik, facing each other across stones washed with crimson.

  “You again?” Tallik asked. His voice was loud enough to rattle the branches at the tops of the agafari trees, and his breath carried the stink of a thousand cesspools. “I thought you had learned.”

  “I’m slow,” Aric said.

  “I let you live before. No longer.”

  “Do your worst.” Fleeing was out of the question now, so Aric decided pretending to bravery was his best option. Not that he could frighten Tallik. But if he could make Tallik believe he wasn’t afraid, perhaps that would give him some small advantage.

  He needed whatever advantage he could gain. The demon towered over him, as big as a giant now, if not bigger.

  Tallik’s tentacles lashed out toward him, all at once. Aric struck back, steel flashing in the colored firelight, slicing through tentacles. They flopped to the bloody stones and writhed there. Tallik yanked them back, grew them again. He sent them once more.

  Once more, Aric fought back.

  The wildness was beginning to grip him again, the feel of steel in his fist feeding him. He moved faster than he knew he could, cutting and slicing, not thinking about his weapon but letting it have its head. The moment seemed at once t
o happen instantly, and drawn out, slowed down—he seemed to see the blade whip almost to the ground, chopping off tentacles as if they were no more substantial than dried out stalks of grass, then swinging up again, carving through more, sweeping to the left to block the ones coming from that way, then down and right again. At the same time it was all faster than his eyes could follow, the blade a silvery blur.

  Then a tentacle caught him on the cheek with the force of a hammer blow, and at the same time another wrapped around his waist. That one burned like coiled fire. If not for the burn, Aric believed the blow to his face might have knocked him senseless.

  If not for the burn, and the wild fever imparted to him by the steel.

  Now, Aric, Nibenay’s voice said.

  Now, Aric, said Siemhouk.

  Another tentacle lashed him in the face. Blood flew, and Aric’s eyes started to close. And another blow landed. Another. Claws tore at his flesh, opening gaping wounds. Blood splashed into the pools below.

  Aric pushed through unconsciousness, refusing to give in. He embraced the fire at his waist, pulling him ever closer to Tallik, because hanging onto that was the only thing keeping him awake.

  He was barely aware of his feet leaving the ground. Tallik lifted him, raising him up, two tentacles wrapped around him now, waist and thigh.

  That massive jaw opened, and the tentacles carried Aric toward the mouth, and Aric knew then that the demon meant to bite him, perhaps to eat him whole.

  Aric could barely speak, but with a thick tongue and battered lips, he said, “I’ve no magic in me, demon, I’d just give you indigestion.”

  He held his coin medallion in his left fist.

  And he plunged his sword deep into Tallik’s upper chest.

  Once again, it burned.

  Aric hung on despite the agony.

  Yes, Aric, Siemhouk said.

  Yes, Aric, said her father.

  Tallik tried to wrench him away with tentacles, to push him away with hands almost big enough to cover Aric completely. But Aric kept his grip on the sword, and the steel clung to Tallik, and it took several moments to realize, through eyes swollen almost to slits, that the blade was glowing red, its glow visible even beneath the demon’s skin.

  Aric’s head flopped onto his shoulder and he blinked, nearly unconscious from the pain, but he could see Siemhouk on the dais, standing straight, arms thrust out before her, and a red glow emanating from her flowing toward Aric’s sword. Another struck the sword from elsewhere, like a beam of scarlet light. Nibenay, Aric guessed, from wherever he was hiding. Then more of them, beams striking the blade, running along it, down its edges and its fuller groove and into Tallik’s breast, and he knew these came from templars, gathering once more around the demon. He caught another glimpse of Siemhouk, and flanking her now were Sheridia and Sellis and Amoni, their hands resting on Siemhouk’s shoulders and hips, feeding him their magical energies.

  And Tallik screamed.

  The scream hit the branches of the agafari trees like a terrible wind, tearing leaves from limbs, raining them onto those gathered below. It deafened Aric; he felt hot blood running down his jawline, and for an instant his eyes shut and he was gone, away from this plaza in the Naggaramakam and back in the chamber beneath Akrankhot, beneath all the steel there, imprisoned for a millennium, and inside the Shadow King’s palace, in darkened corridors choked with incense and tuneless chants, in the elf market, in Nibenay’s streets, alone and frightened, and he almost let go of the sword’s handle.

  Then he was back in that place, in that moment. He strengthened his grip on the sword, its blade nothing but red light now, and shoved it in deeper, to the hilt. Tallik screamed again, his face contorting. Aric felt the wind, smelled his ghastly breath, but heard nothing. Tallik’s knees buckled. He dropped to his knees, trying to cast Aric away but unable to. He was smaller, Aric realized, he had stolen the templars’ strength and grown but now he was shrinking again. Aric twisted the blade in the demon’s breast.

  Tallik’s tentacles relaxed, flopped limp at his sides, then his arms did the same, and he released Aric. Aric hung onto the sword, refusing to fall, to let go, unwilling to give Tallik the chance to pull it from his chest. But now the red light showed in Tallik’s eyes, glowing from his open mouth, from his nostrils and ears, and he shrunk more, teetered, and sank backward, rump meeting heels. He kept going, head swaying back, back paralleling the wet paving stones. Aric hung on.

  The demon slumped to the ground, Aric on top of him, gripping his hilt. They held that position for what seemed a full minute before he heard Siemhouk’s voice again. That’s enough, she said. He is defeated.

  “Enough?” Aric echoed, or thought he did. The world was utterly silent, except for the sounds in his mind.

  Enough.

  Aric found his feet. Through the slits he had for eyes he saw Tallik, still at last, shrunken back to the size he had been when he had first emerged from Kadya, arms and tentacles splayed out around him like a stomped spider’s limbs.

  He drew his sword from the demon’s chest, nothing but steel now, the red glow faded.

  Enough? he thought.

  Summoning what strength remained to him, he struck quickly, lopping off the demon’s head. It rolled to one side, and Aric kicked it away from the body lest it reattach itself somehow.

  That was unnecessary, Nibenay’s voice said.

  I didn’t want to chance someone reviving him again, Aric thought.

  Me, perhaps?

  Aric spat a tooth into the gore coating the paving stones. Perhaps.

  Nibenay didn’t respond. Siemhouk had gone silent, too. On wobbly legs, Aric made his way back toward his friends. They caught him before he fell, and they led him, half-carrying him, out of the plaza, out of the Naggaramakam, past the argosy they had stolen and abandoned, past the guards, who as far as Aric could tell might still have been mute.

  No one raised a hand to stop them.

  XXII

  AFTERWARDS

  The Inn of Nine Feathers was quiet when he arrived, but it was early yet, mid-afternoon, the hottest part of the day. Even the birds were still, sitting in cages suspended from the tavern’s ceiling. Most were sitaks, their plumage deep crimson and pale blue, or burgundy and taupe, with ivory crests, but there were other types Aric couldn’t name, feathered in every color from carmine to chartreuse to indigo.

  A barkeep stood behind a bar with cages lining the wall behind him and birds carved in relief in the wood of the bar front. The birds in those cages squawked when he yanked feathers from their tails. He put the tailfeathers into a mortar, added clear liquors depending on what drink had been ordered, and worked them together until he could pour the vibrant, liquefied contents into mugs. A barmaid served the mugs and took orders for more.

  Aric watched it all through eyes that had not entirely healed over the past three days. He could hear again, and had been relieved to find the deafness was only temporary. He sat at the tavern’s biggest table, and had another dragged over to add more room. Soon enough, Ruhm showed up, then Sellis and Amoni, followed after a few minutes by Rieve. “How’s Pietrus?” Aric asked when she sat down.

  “He’s all right,” Rieve explained. “He’s not comfortable yet venturing into the city. Still, it’s strange how fast people forget. They destroyed our house, killed some servants. That was apparently enough justice, but it will take him a while before he thinks he’s forgiven.”

  “Not too long, I hope,” Aric said.

  “As do we,” Rieve agreed.

  Myrana entered next, a wide smile lighting her face. She sat and slapped the tabletop. “It’s just so good to see you all again!”

  “It’s only been a couple of days,” Sellis said.

  “Long enough. After what we’ve been through, it feels like forever.”

  Finally, Corlan and Mazzax joined the party. Aric was surprised to see them together, and he laughed, then winced at the sharp pain in his ribs when he did. He wasn’t alone in his misery: A
moni had a broken arm, and Sellis was covered in bruises in shades of blue, purple, yellow and black. Only Ruhm had challenged Tallik and emerged relatively intact, with nothing worse than a swollen cheek to show for it.

  They had survived, that was the important thing. Gone up against the greatest threat any of them had ever encountered and walked away. And Aric couldn’t deny that, though he’d been terrified at the time, thinking about it afterward all he remembered was that it had been, in some strange way, fun.

  They chatted casually while the barmaid delivered everyone’s drinks. Once everybody had a mug before them, Aric banged his on the table. “A toast!” he said.

  “A toast,” others echoed.

  “To all of you, boon companions to the end!”

  “And to you, Aric, slayer of demons!” Mazzax added.

  They drank, banged their empties down, and the barmaid came over to fetch more. The birds launched into a series of loud squawks as tailfeathers were plucked.

  “I wish we knew he was truly slain,” Aric said.

  “You cut his head off!” Myrana said.

  “But he lived before, in Siemhouk’s head and inside Kadya. Do we know there’s not some aspect of him, carried in one of the templars?” Aric lowered his voice. “In Nibenay himself?”

  “We can’t know that,” Amoni said. “But it’s unlikely—there was a lot of magical energy channeled through your blade, Aric. Even without beheading him, I’m sure he was killed.”

  “I hope so.” Aric peered across the table at Rieve, copper hair sparkling in candlelight. So beautiful, and yet unattainable, his half-sister. “When will you and Corlan be wed?” he asked.

  “We won’t,” Rieve replied. A glance at Corlan showed only the slightest trace of disappointment, a twitching of the lips, a lowering of eyelids. “Not that I don’t love Corlan—and all of you—but I’ve been thinking a lot, and talking to Grandmother. I’ll be joining the Order of the Serene Bliss, becoming an ascetic, and working on developing my spiritual nature.”