Wind Rider's Oath wg-3

by David Weber

  Kaeritha said nothing, but the other woman saw the question in her eyes and laughed coldly.

  “There are already those who believe he connived at—or possibly even personally ordered—the murder of two handmaidens of Lillinara. He didn’t, of course. For all his bigotry, he’s proven irritatingly resistant to suggestions which might have led him to that sort of direct action. But that isn’t what the war maids think. And it won’t be what they think when men in his colors attack Quaysar itself. When they ride in through the gates of the town and the temple under his banner, coming as envoys to the Voice, and then butcher every citizen of Quaysar and every servant of the temple they can catch.”

  Despite herself, Kaeritha couldn’t keep the horror of the images the false Voice’s words evoked out of her eyes, and the other woman’s smile belonged on something from the depths of Krahana’s darkest hell.

  “There will be survivors, of course. There always are, aren’t there? And I’ll see to it that none of the survivors anyone knows about were ever part of my own little web. The most attentive examination by one of your own infallible champions of Tomanak will only demonstrate that they’re telling the truth about what they saw and who they saw doing it. And one of the things they’ll see, little champion, will be myself and my personal guards and the most senior priestesses, barricading ourselves into the Chapel of the Crone to make our final stand. Trisu’s men will attempt to break into it after us, of course. And I will call down the Lady’s Wrath to utterly destroy the chapel’s attackers … and everyone inside it. Of course, it may not be the Wrath of the precise Lady everyone will assume it was, but no matter. The blast and fires will neatly explain why there are no bodies. Or, at least, none of our bodies.”

  She shook her head in mock sorrow.

  “No doubt some of Trisu’s fellows will be horrified. Others will be charitable enough to believe he simply ran mad, but some of them will feel he was justified in burning out this nest of perversions, especially when the question of forged documents comes to the fore. And whatever Tellian and the Crown may do, little champion, the damage will be done. If Trisu is punished while protesting his innocence and flourishing his proof of forgery, then his fellow lords will blame his liege and the King for a miscarriage of justice. And if he isn’t punished—if, for example, some interfering busybody champion of Tomanak should examine him and find he’s telling the truth and had nothing to do with the attack—then the war maids will be convinced it’s all part of a cover-up and that he’s escaped justice. And so will be many within the Church of Lillinara.”

  “Was that your plan all along?” Kaeritha asked. “To sow dissension and hatred and distrust?”

  “Well, that and to enjoy the pretty fires and all the lovely killing, of course,” the false Voice agreed, pouting as she studied her polished fingernails.

  “I see.” Kaeritha considered that for a moment, then cocked an eyebrow at the other woman. “I imagine it wasn’t too difficult to assassinate the old Voice once Major Kharlan became the commander of her bodyguards. I don’t know whether you used poison or a spell, and I don’t suppose it matters much, either way. But I would like to know what you did with the Voice who was supposed to replace her.”

  The false Voice froze, staring at her for just a moment. It was only an instant, almost too brief to be noticed, and then she smiled.

  “What makes you think anyone did anything ’with’ me? There was no need. It’s not as if I were the first oh-so-perfect, straight and narrow priest or priestess to realize the truth, you know. Or would you pretend that no others have ever joined me in transferring my allegiance to a goddess more worthy of my worship?”

  “No,” Kaeritha acknowledged. “But it’s not as if it happens very often, either. And it’s never happened at all in the case of a true Voice. Nor has it in your case. You were never a priestess of the Mother—or did you truly think you could fool a champion of Tomanak about that?” She grimaced. “I knew the moment I Saw you that you were no priestess of Lillinara. In fact, I’m not entirely certain you were ever even human in the first place. But the one thing I’m positive of is that whoever—or whatever—you may be or look like, you are not the Voice the Church assigned here.”

  “Very clever,” the false Voice hissed. She glared at Kaeritha for several seconds, then shook herself. “I’m afraid that sweet little girl suffered a mischief before she could take up her duties here,” she said with pious sorrow. “I know how dreadfully it disappointed her—in fact, she told me so herself, just before I cut her heart out and Paratha and I ate it in front of her.” She smiled viciously. “And since it bothered her so, and since I was in some small way responsible for her failure, I thought it incumbent upon me to come and discharge those responsibilities for her. A duty which I am now about to complete.”

  “Ah.” Kaeritha nodded. “And just where do I fit into these plans of yours?” she inquired.

  “Why, you die, of course,” the false Voice told her. “Oh, not immediately—not physically, that is. I’m afraid we’ll have to settle for just destroying your soul, for the moment. Then I’ll replace it with a little demon whose essence I happen to have handy. He’ll keep the flesh alive until ’Trisu’ gets around to attacking. Who knows?” She smiled terribly. “Perhaps he’ll enjoy experimenting with some of my guards. I’m afraid you won’t be around anymore to observe the way he broadens your sexual horizons, but no doubt he’ll be amused. And then, when Trisu attacks, you’ll die gallantly, fighting to defend the temple against its desecrators. I think that will add a certain artistic finish to the entire affair, don’t you? With a little luck, it will bring your entire church into the fray against Trisu. Won’t that be lovely? The church of the god of justice helping to destroy the innocent man who didn’t have a thing to do with your fate? And whether that happens or not, the opportunity to treat one of Tomanak’s little pets to the experience she so amply deserves would make this entire investment of effort worth while in its own right.”

  “I see,” Kaeritha repeated. “And you believe you can do all of this to me because —?”

  “I don’t believe anything,” the false Voice told her flatly. “You’ve been mine to do with as I chose from the instant you stepped into this chamber, you stupid bitch. Why do you think you haven’t been able to so much as move your head, or shift your feet?”

  “A good question,” Kaeritha conceded. “But there’s a better one.”

  “What ’better one’?” the false Voice sneered disdainfully.

  “Why do you think I haven’t been able to?” Kaeritha asked calmly, and both swords hissed from their sheaths as she catapulted towards the other woman.

  The sudden eruption of movement took the false Voice completely by surprise. She’d never even suspected that Kaeritha had simply chosen not to move or speak when she became aware of the power crushing down upon her. Whoever—or whatever—the “Voice” might be, she’d never before tried to control a champion of Tomanak. If she had, she would have realized that no coercion, no spell of control or compulsion, even backed by the power of another god’s avatar, could hold the will or mind of one who had sworn herself to the War God’s service and touched His soul as He had touched hers. And because the false Voice hadn’t realized that, she was still staring at Kaeritha—gawking in disbelief—as two matched short swords wrapped in coronas of brilliant blue fire drove through her heart and lungs.

  A scream of agony cored with fury ripped through the audience chamber as the creature masquerading as a Voice of Lillinara fell back in a scalding gush of blood. Kaeritha twisted her wrists before the swords slid free, and even as she did, she went forward on the ball of her left foot while her right foot flashed up behind her. The heel of her heavy riding boot smashed into the person she’d sensed charging up behind her. It wasn’t the clean, central strike she’d hoped for, but it was enough to deflect the attack and send the attacker crashing to the floor with a whooping cry of anguish.

  Kaeritha let the force of her kick
pivot her on her left foot so that she faced Major Kharlan and the Voice’s other servitors. The crackling blue aura of a champion of a God of Light roared up like a volcano of light, blasting through the audience chamber like a silent hurricane. It clung to her, flickering between her and the rest of the world like a thin canopy of lightning. But she could see through it clearly, and her eyes found Paratha with unerring speed. The major’s sabre was still coming out of its scabbard, and at least half of the others seemed stunned into momentary paralysis. But that paralysis wouldn’t hold them for long, and Kaeritha knew it.

  Every champion of Tomanak had his or her own preferred combat style. Kaeritha’s was totally unlike Bahzell’s, except for one thing; neither of them was ever prepared to stand on the defensive if they had any choice. And since there was no one to watch her back or coordinate with, Kaeritha Seldansdaughter decided to make a virtue of the fact that there was only one of her.

  She charged.

  There was no doubt in her mind that Paratha was the most dangerous of her remaining opponents. Unfortunately, Paratha seemed disinclined to face her in personal combat. The major dodged swiftly, darting behind one of the corrupted priestesses, who shook herself and then charged to meet Kaeritha with no weapon besides a dagger and the naked fury blazing in her eyes.

  Kaeritha’s right blade came down with lightning speed and all the elegance of a cleaver. It lopped off her opponent’s right hand like a pruning hook removing a branch. The woman shrieked as blood spouted from the stump of her wrist, and then Kaeritha’s left blade went through the front of her throat from right to left in a backhanded fan of blood. Some of the blood splashed across Kaeritha’s face, painting it like a barbarian Wakuo raider’s.

  “Tomanak! Tomanak!“

  Kaeritha’s war cry echoed in the chamber as another dagger grated on her breastplate, and a short, vicious thrust put one of her swords through her attacker’s belly. The mortally wounded priestess fell back, writhing and screaming, and Kaeritha’s champion’s healing sense cringed as she realized all of the daggers coming at her were coated in deadly poison.

  She slashed a third priestess to the floor with her right hand even as her left sword darted out to engage and parry yet another dagger. She twisted between two opponents, killing one and wounding the other as she passed, and then she was behind them all and spun on her toes like a dancer to charge once more.

  “Tomanak!”

  Her foes seemed less eager to engage her this time, and she smiled like a direcat, teeth white through the blood on her face, as she slammed into them once more. Two more priestesses went down, then another, and finally Kaeritha heard alarm bells ringing throughout the temple complex.

  Her jaw tightened. She had no doubt at all that the Voice and Paratha had drawn upon their patron’s power to make certain Quaysar’s guard force was loyal to them, whether or not those guards knew what they truly served. And even if there’d been no tampering at all, any guardsman who entered this audience chamber and saw the Voice and half a dozen or more of her priestesses dead on the floor was unlikely to assume that the person who’d killed them was the intended victim of an ambush by the Dark. She had no more than seconds before a veritable flood of guardsmen and war maids came pouring in upon her, and her swords flashed like lethal scythes as she slashed her way through the dagger-armed priestesses towards Major Kharlan.

  The bodies between them flew aside, screaming or already dead, and Paratha was no longer falling back. The major still declined to rush forward, watching with no more apparent emotion than a serpent as her allies fell like so much dead meat before Kaeritha’s blades. But she made no effort to flee, either, and as Kaeritha looked at her, she Saw something she’d never Seen before.

  A cable of vile yellow-green energy linked Paratha to the corpse of the false Voice, and even as Kaeritha watched, something flowed along that cable. Something coming from the dead Voice to the living Paratha. And there were other cables, reaching out to the fallen priestesses, as well. The web of sickening luminescence centered on Paratha, sucking greedily at whatever flowed along it. Kaeritha didn’t know what it was, but the corona which had clung to Paratha from the outset suddenly blazed up, fierce and bright as a forest fire to Kaeritha’s Vision. And as it did, Kaeritha knew at last which of the Dark Gods she faced, for a huge, hideous spider wrapped in flame arose behind Paratha.

  The spider of Shigu, Queen of Hell and Mother of Madness. Wife of Phrobus and mother of all his dark children. Far more powerful than her son Sharna , with a foul and twisted malice none of her offspring could equal, and Lillinara’s most bitter enemy for the way in which her parody of womanhood perverted and fouled all that Lillinara stood for.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The flame-wrapped spider towered up, compound eyes ablaze with hatred and madness. Its mandibles clashed, dripping with venom that flamed and hissed, bubbling on the polished stone floor as it burned its way into it. Claws scraped and grated, and the vilest stench Kaeritha had ever imagined filled the audience chamber. The hideous apparition loomed over her, reaching for her with more than mere claws and pincers, and a black tide of terror lapped out before it.

  Even as Kaeritha recognized the spider, Paratha seemed to grow taller. The false Voice hadn’t been Shigu’s true tool, Kaeritha realized; Paratha had. The Voice might even have believed that she was Shigu’s chosen, but in truth, it had always been Paratha, and now the major no longer hid behind the camouflage of the Voice. She was drinking in the life energy—probably even the very souls—of her fallen followers, and something more was coming with it. Potent as all that energy might be, it was only a focus, a burning glass which reached out for something even stronger and more vile and focused it all upon the major.

  Paratha’s face was transfigured, and her entire body seemed to quiver and vibrate as Shigu poured energy into her chosen. Kaeritha remembered Bahzell’s description of the night he’d faced an avatar of Sharna , and she knew this was worse. Harnak of Navahk had carried a cursed blade which had served as Sharna ’s key to the universe of mortals. Paratha carried no key; she was the key, and Kaeritha’s mind cringed away from the insane risk Shigu had chosen to run.

  No wonder she’d been able to penetrate Lillinara’s church, tamper with scores of people in Kalatha, and kill Lillinara’s priestesses and Voices and replace them with her own tools! For all the endless ages since Phrobus’ fall into evil, no god of Dark or Light had dared to contend openly with one of his or her divine enemies on the mortal plane. They were simply too powerful. If they clashed directly, they might all too easily destroy the very universe for whose dominion they contended. And so there were limits, checks set upon their power and how they might intervene in the world of mortals. It was why there were champions of Light and their Dark equivalents.

  Yet Shigu had intervened directly. She’d moved beyond the agreed upon limits and stepped fully into the world of mortals. Paratha was no champion. She was Shigu’s focus, her anchor in this universe. She wasn’t touched by the power of Shigu—in that moment, she was the power of Shigu, and Kaeritha felt a terrifying surge of answering power pouring into her from Tomanak.

  “So, little champion,” Paratha hissed. “You would contend with Me, would you?”

  She laughed, and the web of her power reached out to her living minions, as well as the dead. Kaeritha heard their shrieks of agony—agony mingled with a horrible, defiled ecstasy—as Shigu’s avatar seized them. They didn’t die, not right away, but that was no mercy. Instead, they became secondary nodes of the web centered upon Paratha. They blazed like human torches to Kaeritha’s Sight as the same power crashed through them, and the will which animated Paratha—a will Kaeritha realized was no longer mortal, if it ever had been—fastened upon them like pincers. All nine of the remaining priestesses moved as one, closing in to form a deadly circle about Kaeritha with Paratha.

  “So tasty your soul will be,” Paratha crooned. “I’ll treasure it like fine brandy.”

  “I think
not,” Kaeritha told her, and Paratha’s eyes flickered as she heard another timbre in Kaeritha’s soprano. A deeper timbre, like the basso rumble of cavalry gathering speed for a charge. The blue corona flickering around Kaeritha blazed higher and hotter, towering over her as the luminously translucent form of Tomanak Orfro, God of War and Justice, Captain General of the Gods of Light, took form to confront the spider of Shigu. The priestesses caught up in Shigu’s web froze, as if stilled by some wizard’s spell, but although Paratha drew back ever so slightly, her hesitation was only brief and her mouth twisted like the snarl of some rabid beast.

  “Not this time, Scale Balancer,“ she—or someone else, using her voice—hissed venomously. “This one is mine!”

  Her body tensed, and, on the last word, a deadly blast of power ripped from her. It screamed across the audience chamber like a battering ram of yellow-green hunger, and the entire temple seemed to quiver on its foundations as it slammed into Kaeritha. Or, rather, into the blue nimbus blazing about her. The nimbus which deflected its deadly strength in a score of shattered streamers of vicious lightning that cracked and flared like whips of flame. Small explosions laced the chamber’s walls, shattered fountains, and incinerated two of the living priestesses where they stood, and Kaeritha felt the staggering violence of the impact in her very bones. But that was all she felt, and she smiled thinly at her foe.

  “Yours, am I?” she asked, and a strange sense of duality swept through her on the tide of Tomanak’s presence. “I think not,” she repeated, and Paratha’s face twisted in mingled fury and disbelief as Tomanak’s power shed the fury of her attack.

  Kaeritha’s smile was hard and cold, and she felt the call to battle throbbing in her veins. She was herself, as she had always been, and the will and courage which kept her on her feet in the face of Shigu’s hideous manifestation were her own. But behind her will, supporting it and bolstering her courage like a tried and trusted battlefield commander, was Tomanak Himself. His presence filled her as Shigu’s filled Paratha, but without submerging her. Without requiring her subservience, or making her no more than his tool. She was who she had always been—Kaeritha Seldansdaughter, champion of Tomanak—and she laughed through the choking stench of Shigu’s perversion.