Mordant's Need

  ‘Yes.’ Artagel stopped, turned. Then he moved her until her back touched one wall. ‘You were there.’ With a gesture, he indicated the passage. ‘We fought there.’ The obscure illumination made his face as grim as his voice. ‘The Perdon and Prince Kragen came from the other side. They rescued us.’ Abruptly, he confronted his brother. ‘I’m not sure you realize,’ he grated through his teeth, ‘that the bastard beat me – whoever he was. The last time that happened, I was a lot younger than you are now.’

  Light gleamed dimly across Geraden’s forehead as though he were sweating in spite of the cold. ‘Somehow,’ he muttered, ‘I’m sure you’ll get a chance to try him again. I just hope it doesn’t come today. I won’t be very good at rescuing you.

  ‘But this isn’t what we’re looking for.’ He moved past his brother and peered at Terisa through the gloom. ‘We need to find the exact point of translation. If there is one.

  ‘Where did they come from?’

  She closed her eyes. She had been walking with Prince Kragen. He had been talking about Elega. One bodyguard was ahead of them; the other, behind. She heard a quiet leather sound – a sword leaving a sheath? Then the men charged forward. The black leather of their armor made them difficult to see. Their naked swords were more distinct, glinting lanternlight—

  ‘There,’ she breathed and opened her eyes. She was pointing at what appeared to be a dark side passage diagonally across the corridor from her. ‘They came out of there.’

  ‘Good.’ Geraden was whispering as though he, too, feared being overheard. ‘Let’s take a look.’

  His breath left a wreath of steam in the air as he moved away.

  Artagel had his sword out. It seemed to flex with the movement of his wrist. He touched her arm with his free hand, and she went with him after Geraden.

  The way ahead remained black. If it was a side passage, it was too short to merit a lantern of its own. Illumination reflecting from the main corridor faded rapidly. After a moment, Artagel asked, ‘Do you want to wait while I get us a light?’

  ‘No,’ hissed Geraden. ‘If there is a mirror focused here, light will just make it easier for us to be seen.’

  Artagel nodded. He was keeping Terisa positioned between him and the wall, to reduce the number of directions from which she could be threatened.

  ‘Concentrate,’ Geraden said to her over his shoulder. ‘The point of translation could be anywhere. Try to feel it. Forget everything else and just try to feel it.’

  ‘Concentrate yourself,’ she retorted. Her whisper came out hoarsely. ‘I’m not the only one who doesn’t know what his talents are.’

  Geraden paused for a second. ‘Good point.’

  Artagel flashed her a grin she could barely see in the thickening dark.

  This is silly, she enunciated to herself. All three of them were supposed to be adults – yet here they were, groping their way down a blind hall looking for some place where the air or the stone or who knew what would give one of them twinges. We must be out of our minds. If somebody had jumped at her and said, Boo! she would have screamed.

  That idea made her want to giggle.

  It distracted her. She didn’t realize what was happening until a touch of cold as thin as a feather and as sharp as steel slid straight through the center of her abdomen.

  Before she could react – before she could try to shout a warning – a man stepped out of the wall. His body felt like a block of stone as he collided with her heavily, knocking her against Artagel.

  Artagel clinched her arm. ‘Back!’ he snapped. ‘Back to the light!’ and flung her away from him.

  At once, the cold sensation vanished.

  She didn’t notice the difference.

  She stumbled, caught her balance. Where was Geraden? Every muscle in her body wanted to run, but she turned in time to see Artagel thrust Geraden after her while threatening a shadowy figure with his blade.

  Urgently, she raced for the main passage and the lanterns.

  Geraden was faster. He was beside her when he reached the corridor. He steered her to the right, toward the nearer lantern. Their momentum took them to the opposite wall, to the place where she had fallen and waited for the man in black to kill her. There they both whirled to see what was happening to Artagel.

  He came into the light with his sword still poised between him and the obscure figure. No, it wasn’t one figure: she saw two. Three. Four. They moved slowly, massively; the menace of Artagel’s blade didn’t hinder them.

  Four. That was bad. But at least there weren’t any more. As they reached the light, she saw that they did in fact look like men. They had the heads and faces and limbs of men. Their nakedness showed that they had the bodies of men. Their arms were extended for embraces.

  But their eyes were dead. And under their skin lumps the size of hands moved visibly – lumps that couldn’t be muscle.

  They carried no weapons, however. And their movements were so leaden that Artagel would surely be able to handle them.

  He retreated in the other direction, trying to lead them away. His fighting grin was absent. Behind his perplexity, his eyes hinted at horror.

  The four men ignored him. As they emerged from the side passage, they headed for Terisa and Geraden.

  Artagel shouted to distract them. They ignored that as well. They might have been deaf. Lumbering woodenly, they went after their chosen object.

  In an effort to turn them, he struck. His sword whirled and flashed and came down on the wrist of the leading figure with such force that Terisa winced, expecting to see the hand flop to the stone.

  But the hand didn’t fall. There wasn’t any blood. Instead, the skin of the wrist peeled back from the point of the blow, revealing an insect like a monstrous cockroach where the bones of the hand should have been.

  The skin withered away; the insect dropped from the wrist-stump to the floor.

  It tasted the air with its feelers for a second, worked its mandibles, then scurried toward Terisa and Geraden.

  At the same time, a second insect started to squirm out of the lumbering figure’s wrist. The skin of the wrist withered, as if the cockroach inside it were all that had preserved it as living tissue.

  Terisa would have screamed if she could have found her voice. But the insect was faster than the heavy body or host that had carried it; and Geraden had shouted at her, grabbed her arm, trying to tug her away; and some residue of the incisive cold that had presaged this assault seemed to knot up her chest, so that she was hardly able to breathe.

  While the second insect dropped to the floor from the tattered flesh of the figure’s wrist, a third fought into view out of his forearm.

  She couldn’t tear her eyes away from what was happening. Geraden had to drag her backward. She saw wild revulsion in Artagel’s eyes as he sprang to the attack.

  One high hard blow of his sword bit into the nearest figure’s shoulder at the base of the neck, cutting deeply through the man’s chest. Another swing – so quick that it seemed to be part of the first – came around from the other side, licking murderously far between his ribs.

  But there was no blood. He didn’t fall.

  Like a rotten husk, his torso split open. His head continued staring straight ahead; his legs continued walking stiffly, heavily, down the corridor after his fellows – and dozens and dozens of cockroaches came tumbling out of his ruptured chest and abdomen.

  For an instant, they seethed around each other, searching for a scent. Then they ran like a rush of blood after Terisa and Geraden.

  Abruptly, the man’s head burst, scattering a knot of insects among the rest. After that, his legs seemed to lose their way. They tottered to the side, hit the wall, and fell over, while more and more huge cockroaches swarmed out of the crumbling remains of his waist and hips and thighs.

  Soon there was nothing left of him except hurrying insects.

  Terisa heard Artagel swearing in vicious desperation, as if he were about to vomit.

  ‘Terisa
!’ Geraden hauled on her arm. ‘Run!’

  Transfixed by Artagel’s attack and its result, she hadn’t realized how much she was hindering Geraden – how swiftly the insects were moving. The nearest one had nearly reached the skirt of her gown.

  Gasping, she whirled away.

  For a few strides, she ran, ran with all her heart. But then she had to stop and turn, to see—

  Artagel had put away his sword. With his face clenched and bleak, his lower lip bitten between his teeth, he came up behind one of the remaining figures, stooped rapidly, hooked his hands around the squirming ankles, and pulled as hard as he could.

  The man toppled forward with the slow, unreactive violence of felled timber.

  When he hit the floor, the impact broke his whole body open. All the insects that had packed themselves into his flesh were released at once.

  They flooded the passage from wall to wall. Lanternlight gleamed and glinted on their dark backs; they formed a flowing current as they sped forward, champing their mandibles for the flesh of their victims.

  Terisa fled again.

  Geraden ran with her. ‘We can keep ahead of them,’ he panted. His chest heaved, urgent for air. ‘Don’t stop. We can outrun them.’

  ‘How far?’ Her heart was on fire, as if she had already run for miles. She seemed to be suffocating on fear and cold. ‘How far can you run?’

  ‘Far enough,’ he promised grimly. Yet he sounded like each breath he took hurt his lungs.

  She stopped near a lantern and looked back. She and Geraden were twenty or thirty feet ahead of the leading cockroaches. From this angle, the whole floor of the passage seemed to boil with menace as the insects rushed forward. Behind them, the figure Artagel had struck first was just finishing his collapse, releasing the last of his occupants among the swarm. The remaining man increased his pace to keep up with the hunting torrent.

  Artagel followed in a frenzy. ‘Geraden!’ His call echoed down the corridor like a wail. ‘What can I do? Tell me what to do!’

  ‘No,’ Terisa rasped. She fought for air, but was too frightened to get it. ‘I can’t run far enough. We don’t know where we’re going. If we get out of here, we’ll just lead those things into Orison.’

  In response, Geraden gave her a look of pure anguish.

  ‘We’ve got to fight somehow,’ she said as if a total stranger were talking, someone who had no acquaintance with the panic which hammered in her heart, the dread and revulsion that twisted her stomach. ‘We’ve got to fight.’

  For one more moment while the cockroaches rushed closer, he stared at her as though he were about to start sobbing. Then he gave an inarticulate shout like a cry of battle and leaped for the lantern.

  Wrenching it from its hooks regardless of the way the heated iron scorched his hands, he flung it at the insects.

  It hit in a splash of burning oil, and a dozen or more of the creatures caught fire.

  They burned almost instantly, spouting flames as bright as torches: they were incendiary in some way. After two or three heartbeats, nothing remained of them except bits of charred carapace—

  —nothing except a black vapor which rose into the air and spread quickly.

  It smelled like a strong combination of formaldehyde and partially digested meat, and it clawed at Terisa’s throat and lungs like acid. Gagging, she doubled over: the spasm that gripped her chest was too fierce to let her cough.

  The passage had gone dim without the lantern, but she was close enough to the floor to see the nearest cockroaches scuttling rapidly forward, unconcerned by a few deaths. She had to run, had to—

  She couldn’t. It was impossible. She could not break the hold of that black vapor on the inside of her chest.

  Retching hard enough to crack his ribs, Geraden got his arms around her and somehow found the strength to lift her off her feet. With her convulsed weight awkward in his embrace, he stumbled away, struggling to outrun the insects again.

  In a few strides, he set her down to see if she could carry herself now. She snatched a whooping breath, and the spasm began to unclench. Still clinging to him for support, she fled farther before turning to look back.

  She was in time to see Artagel run up with a lantern that he must have retrieved from the opposite direction and throw it like a madman at the head of the last erect attacker.

  He didn’t know his danger: he was too far away to have seen accurately what had happened to Geraden and her. But she couldn’t shout a warning. Her raw throat could barely whisper his name as the lantern hit and broke – and the lumbering figure went up in flames, burning with such sudden fury that he seemed incandescent – and the spouting black exhalations of that many insects engulfed Artagel, causing him to collapse as effectively as a sword-thrust in the belly.

  ‘Artagel,’ croaked Geraden. ‘Artagel.’

  Terisa watched Artagel and the insects while her fear turned to a cold, dark anger. This time, she was the one who grabbed at Geraden’s arm and pulled. ‘Come on.’ Her voice was only a scrape of pain in her throat, but now the chill seemed to be doing her some good, slowly numbing the hurt of the black vapor. ‘Come on.’

  Ahead, she saw that the corridor came to a T, branching left and right. More light seemed to emanate from the right than from the left.

  When she reached the T, she scanned both passages to ascertain that there was in fact a lantern nearby off to the right. Then she released Geraden. The cockroaches were after her. They had come through the same mirror that the man in black had used to attack her. She was the only person she knew who had active enemies.

  ‘Get the lantern,’ she choked out. ‘I’ll lead them away.’

  He gaped at her as though his brother’s fall had cost him his wits.

  Urgently, she pushed him into motion. ‘Go! I’ll lead them away. You follow. Every lantern we pass, you can kill a few more. Just don’t breathe that vapor.’

  At last, he appeared to understand. He moved into the right-hand corridor a few steps ahead of the cockroaches.

  Retreating backward so that she could see what he did, she went to the left.

  Unfortunately, her assumption was mistaken. The entire swarm swept after Geraden, ignoring her completely.

  Geraden!

  Her anger crumbled into horror and incomprehension. The strength ran out of her: she nearly sank to her knees. Slowly, she raised her hands to her mouth, and fear filled her eyes.

  He didn’t realize his danger until he reached the lantern, unhooked it, and turned back. Then he saw the oncoming rush. For a second, he was paralyzed. Dismay wiped the combative stubbornness off his face. His hands lowered the lantern: it looked like it was about to fall.

  One of her knees failed. She lost her balance and stumbled to the floor, breaking the ice that scummed a wide puddle. Water soaked into her gown. She wasn’t even on her feet when she heard him howl, ‘Terisa! Get help!’

  But she was watching him, watching with all she had left, yearning for him in voiceless desperation, as Adept Havelock arrived at his side and leveled a beam of light against the onslaught.

  Apparently, the mad old Imager had been waiting in the hall for just this purpose. The reflections from his eyes danced insanely, but his movements betrayed none of the erratic frenzy, the hysteria of intent, which she had seen in the past: they were deft and sure, almost calm.

  One hand took hold of Geraden’s collar and pulled him back; the other directed his beam at the seething cockroaches.

  Terisa was past surprise, so she noticed as if it were a matter of course that the Adept’s weapon was the same small piece of glass he had used before to light her way and save her life. Now, however, that mirror shone much more hotly: its light was as fierce as fire. More powerfully than burning oil, it ignited the insects. They took flame and were incinerated almost instantly, popping like firecrackers as they died.

  Then billowing black vapor filled the corridor so thickly that the illumination of Geraden’s lantern was obscured. Only Adept Havel
ock’s fire was bright enough to show through the sudden midnight as the beam swept the floor and cockroaches by the hundreds burned.

  At the last moment, Terisa remembered to hold her breath.

  For what felt like a long time – a dozen heartbeats, two dozen – the Adept’s light moved swiftly and methodically over the stone, boiling the damp to steam in order to achieve the death of each insect. Of course, the creatures simplified this process by marching with mindless determination in Geraden’s direction. Adept Havelock didn’t need to be concerned that any of them would sneak past him along the walls, or would turn and flee. Nevertheless he was careful, and so the cleansing of the passage took time. She felt her mind going giddy as she wondered whether the Adept had enough sense – or Geraden enough self-awareness – to stop breathing.

  Then the vapor became thick enough to block even Adept Havelock’s beam. The air began to sting her eyes. She lowered her forehead to the floor. The ache of her bruise against the cold stone gave her a focal point for her concentration, and she clung to it so that she wouldn’t breathe.

  Unexpectedly, something nudged her shoulder.

  Believing in panic that she had been found by one of the cockroaches, she flipped to the side and gasped for air so that she could scream.

  Adept Havelock stood over her, dressed as usual in his worn surcoat and tattered chasuble. His light played on the ceiling, filling the corridor.

  He looked like a dangerous lunatic. His disfocused eyes bulged; the few remaining tufts of his hair protruded wildly. His fleshy grin was gleeful and lecherous. Behind the dirty stubble on his cheeks, his skin seemed to be turning purple.

  As she began to cough, however, he let his own breath out with a burst and started breathing again. The air made him cough as well, and a few tears trickled from his eyes; but his eyes stopped bulging almost at once, and his skin lost its purple intensity.

  ‘I see,’ he rasped hoarsely, ‘that the air is now tolerable. It was kind of you to sample it for me.’