Abramm glanced at Trap and by unvoiced agreement assumed the role of spokesman. “I am Abramm Kalladorne, Prince of Kiriath, and this is my retainer, Captain Meridon of the Kiriathan Royal Guard.”
The murmuring started up at once, as his words were passed back to the others and conclusions eagerly reached.
“We have been lately in the possession of one Katahn ul Manus, until we escaped the Games at Xorofin some days ago.”
“You are the White Pretender, then?” Shemm’s eyes seemed to bore right through his skull.
“I was.”
The dark eyes darted to Trap. `And you the Infidel?”
“I was, Great One.”
Shemm’s gaze returned to Abramm-hard, sharp, strangely threatening. “Why did you come to us?”
Here it is, Abramm thought. The moment you either do it or you don’t. He pulled back his shoulders and met the level gaze unflinching. “We were told we would find friends here-men who wish to throw off the evil strangling this land.” He glanced at the men behind Shemm-the two priests and four attendants. “We were told you had need of someone to awaken the Heart of the SaHal.”
Flint-hard eyes bored into him.
“You claim to be our Deliverer, then,” Shemm said, in a voice as flat and devoid of emotion as any of Shettai’s.
It was ridiculous. Abramm knew he was not their Deliverer. He knew there was not a blessed thing he could do here to help them re-ignite their Heart. He knew they would kill him when they learned that, but what else could he do? He had done all Shettai had bid him, and if he failed, if they killed him …
Heart pounding, he lifted his chin a fraction higher and pitched his voice loud so that it would carry through the hall. “Yes.”
“You stand ready to prove that?”
“I do.”
“Very well, then.”
“Now, my lord?” Japheth turned to his king, gaping. “But it is past dark, and the Horror is aprowl, and-“
“If he is truly the one we seek, Japheth, the Horror cannot stop us. You will know him by his deeds, by the light with which he slays the Darkness.’” The king’s dark eyes flicked to the priest, and one brow arched. “Is that not how it goes, Mephid?”
“It is, my king,” Mephid growled.
“Then we shall let the Heart decide the truth. If he fails, we will kill them as we killed the others. Unless the Horror kills them first.” He glanced at his attendants and the men sprang forward to lead the way through the crowd.
“He will need the orb, Great One.” Trap’s voice stopped the king and drew everyone’s eye. The Terstan still knelt where he had been placed, and now, with the king frowning down at him, he elaborated. “The talisman you took from him. He will need it to awaken the Heart.” He flicked a glance at Abramm, clearly urging him to take his cue.
Abramm frowned, annoyed at the Terstan’s attempt at manipulation and reluctant to take back the orb now that he was freed of it. Did Meridon really think it might somehow ignite the Heart? And if it did, did Abramm want to be in the middle of it?
Or was it just the veren Trap was thinking of, and Abramm’s need for some protection against it?
He was aware of the king’s regard again, saw the questioning look in his eyes. The decision came all at once, riding that crazy, fatalistic bravado that had driven him from the moment he’d gotten here. Why not take the thing? What could it do now? He was going to die anyway…
“He is right,” Abramm said. “I had forgotten it was taken from me, but I will need it.”
A moment the king considered, then he motioned for the priest to return the artifact. As the stone bounced once more against the scab on Abramm’s bare breastbone, he flashed a sour look at the Terstan. As if this would change anything.
Emerging from the great hall, they traversed yet another canyon with numerous doors and openings carved into its salmon-hued walls. Iron brackets holding lighted torches had been fixed into the stone beside many of them, and often the doorways were blocked with beads or skin coverings.
Shortly they emerged from the canyon, the mist forming a woolen wall around them, reflecting back the torchlight and blocking view of anything beyond the radius of a few strides.
It seemed to Abramm that they progressed down a long promenade. An ancient pavement buckled and humped beneath his feet, and lines of gnarled, mostly dead olive trees loomed ghostlike in the mist beside them. Occasionally they stepped across deep, black-edged scores in the pavement or piles of rubble fallen across their path. In places the trees lay uprooted, their branches clawing at the men as they passed. Sometimes the mist shredded enough to reveal the doddering, age-stained remains of masonry walls jutting up from the rubble field. Sometimes the walls formed buildings with windows and railed balconies and frescoed doorways, only to fall away in rubble and blackened timbers and gaping craters awrithe with thousands of dark shapes skittering away from the torchlight.
Shadowspawn. Twisted things that watched from the mist and darkness. Staffid of all forms. Feyna. Griiswurm. He recognized right off the strong feeling of anxiety and aversion so peculiar to the griiswurm’s aura, even spotted here and there the globular bodies and tentacled legs hugging the rocks and walls. Time and again, unseen horrors moaned and crackled and muttered around them, and once, from somewhere comfortingly distant, something roared. Or screamed. Or moaned. The sound reverberated off cliffs and mortared stone, making it impossible to pinpoint the direction from whence it came.
“I hope these people know what they’re doing,” Trap muttered beside him.
Abramm strained at the bonds on his wrists yet again, inwardly chafing with the helpless frustration of having his hands tied in the face of obvious danger. There had been no talk among the men since they’d left the hall, but now it seemed there was not even breath. All held either bow or sling, and all had eyes only for the torchlit mist around them.
They were well away from the canyon’s protective embrace when the veren’s familiar frigid aura enveloped them, stopping them en masse. Every gaze rushed skyward as arrows were nocked and stones slid into slings. Abramm stared at the wooly ceiling like everyone else, gooseflesh prickling his back and neck as he strained again at his bonds, about to burst with the need to be free.
But again the creature passed on without attacking, still just keeping an eye on them-or perhaps only waiting for the right moment. In any case, the aura faded, and the group released a collective sigh. The men who had gathered protectively around their king relaxed and started forward again.
Shortly they entered a wide plaza, its pale pavement buckled and scored by numerous trenches. At its midst stood a circular stone structure, double a man’s height and shaped like a cone without its peak. It crawled with tentacled griiswurm and was encircled at the top by a lumpy iron railing from which three iron poles extended skyward. Once likely converging to a central point above the whole, now they were twisted and bent over the mound of stone and griiswurm. In fact, looking more closely, he realized the lumps on the railings were also griiswurm.
The Dorsaddi encircled it silently, and when all had assembled, Shemm ordered Abramm’s bonds cut. He gestured to a fractured, half-buried stairway leading to the top of the pile. “The Heart is up there. Awaken it if you can.”
Abramm’s anxiety had grown so great he could hardly breathe, much less move, and he knew it wasn’t just the aura of the griiswurm. The certainty of his death was hitting him hard now-and it terrified him.
He swallowed. “You must remove the spawn,” he said, gesturing at the mound. “I cannot concentrate with them there.”
As if concentration would change anything. Yelaki!
Shemm matched him frown for frown, suspicion burning in his eyes. He probably guessed it for the delaying tactic it was, but he waved his men to comply all the same. With spears and swords and arrows, they stabbed and pried loose all the larger spawn, casting them off the mound as others went round scooping them up and hurling them into the night.
Too soon the structure was cleared. Abramm stared up at the crumpled railing. That would make a good place for the veren to take him, wouldn’t it? He swallowed grimly, feeling the eyes of the Dorsaddi upon him. Shemm still frowned-the priest, Mephid, was almost smiling, and Japheth looked puzzled.
`Awaken the Heart,” she’d said.
Very well, my love. For you.
He clambered up the ruined stairway and ducked under the railing that supported the ruined struts. It ringed a gaping crater some twenty feet in diameter. At its lowest point, half buried in rubble, lay a large crystalline sphere, roughly a forearm in diameter. The spore wriggling to life in his wrist and the sudden glow of the orb on his chest told him power dwelt in this place.
But how to awaken it, he still had no idea.
Grimly he walked the crater’s circumference. Not much longer now and they’d see he didn’t know what he was doing, realize he was indeed the imposter they had already accused him of being. Unless the veren came first.
Having circled the pit twice, there was nothing left but to step into it, and he did so, skidding down the stone scree to the bottom, hip-deep below its rim. There he spied a heavy, warped shield of bronze twisting out of the rubble and marked with the angular symbols of the Tahg.
His light will protect us: the King of Light, the King’s Light, the kings of Light, three and one. He is before us and with us and over us. Darkness shall not touch us, so long as we are in the Light.
He straightened with a chill. That was from the First Word. But what was it doing here? And rendered in the Tahg at that? The sense of destiny fell on him again, strong and compelling, a sense of being at the mercy of something-or Someone-far greater than himself, like a leaf caught in a windstorm.
He stepped over the shield, moved on to the pit’s center, and squatted beside the reflective surface of the crystalline globe. This must be the Heart. It was slick as it looked but cool and dead to the touch. He stood again, imprisoned by twisted bars of metal stabbing up through the mist. A ring of hard-eyed Dorsaddi stared at him from below, the ruddy torchlight imbuing their still forms with a brooding malevolence.
`Awaken the Heart,” she’d said.
I don’t know how, my love. Curse me, but I don’t know how!
He stepped onto the buried globe, closed his eyes, and reached for the talisman on his chest, willing something to happen. The scar on his arm writhed furiously, and nausea swirled in his middle. Beyond that, nothing.
He let out his breath and looked at the stone in his hands. It gleamed softly, pale opalescent white against his dirty palms. That was all.
A soft word sounded behind him, followed by an ominous rustle. Then a loud cry split the night.
“Wait?”
He turned to see Trap scrambling up the mound, his bonds falling away in a cloud of smoke. Gaining the top, he turned, his body now between Abramm and the three archers who stood at Shemm’s side with longbows drawn and aimed.
“Wait!” he cried again. “He does not know-“
“Now?” Shemm commanded.
C H A P T E R
32
Light flared in a blazing corona around Trap’s body just as the arrows released. Abramm saw them with unnerving clarity, floating slowly toward him while Trap fell backward in slow motion, still ablaze with white fire.
His left shoulder caught Abramm in the chest, though Abramm was himself already twisting down and away. He fell hard, on his left side, stones gouging his chest and shoulder, Trap slamming down on top of him.
Angry shouting rang out, followed by a clatter of arrows and bows and the thump and rattle of men climbing the mound. Trap shoved up off him and waved a score of clear white kelistars into existence as Abramm gasped back the air driven out of him in the fall. He started to press himself up when he saw the Heart flickering with the same white light as Trap’s kelistars.
Astonishment drove him to his feet and back a few steps before he realized what he was doing, and he almost took an arrow in the arm for his incaution. He ducked back below the crater’s lip, but before he could draw Trap’s attention to the globe, the veren dropped out of the mist above them. It slammed into one of the rails and pushed off it, bending it farther into the pit, the metal squealing protest. Then it was gone in an icy wind, flapping skyward on powerful wings.
Breathlessly Abramm crawled up beside Trap to peer over the lip of the mound. The ring of bowmen had scattered. Shemm and his personal guard were already heading back toward the safety of the canyon walls. Others raced around the mound, all with arrows nocked and eyes cast heavenward.
With a shriek the veren plunged out of the mist again, pouncing on one of the king’s protectors and leaping skyward, a headless body slumping to the ground in its wake. At that the Dorsaddi looked ready to bolt-a few didbut a good number of them had managed to hold steady and fire off some of their arrows. A handful still crouched around the mound, but even as Abramm noted them, they were up and chasing their fellows, taking their weapons with them.
“The spears,” Abramm said, pointing. “They left some spears.”
“Right.” Trap was scrambling over the lip’s edge in tandem with Abramm as the veren burst upon them yet again. Talons sliced Abramm’s shoulder as he flung himself down the slope. Seizing the spear he had targeted, he rolled to his feet. Trap came up simultaneously beside him, and they stood back to back in the old arena stance, spears raised and ready. Torches scattered the cleared plaza, providing a sputtering light.
The creature swooped out of the darkness, coming at Abramm, arrows gleaming in its breast. He nearly impaled it before it veered away, slamming him with a wing and knocking him back into Trap.
“You have a plan?” Meridon asked as they regained their balance.
Abramm wanted to run for the safety of the canyons like the Dorsaddi were doing, but he knew that would only result in the eventual completion of their execution as imposters. Since he hadn’t managed to ignite the Heart, they needed to do something else to prove their worth. “I think we’d better kill it,” he said, watching the misty ceiling and settling into a ready stance. “How’s that shield of yours coming?”
“Unreliable at best.”
“Guess we’ll have to do it hand to hand, then.”
A flash of movement drew his eye, and he swung his spear in time to see a round, wet object hit the pavement and bounce. Guessing the ploy, he was already turning back, even as he sensed the massive body coming in from the opposite side. It swooped in too fast for him to get his spear on target. All he saw were gleaming talons reaching for his face, and he had to dive aside. He hit the ground rolling as white light flared somewhere past his field of vision. The creature squawked, a wing hit him, and the thing was gone again.
As he came to his feet Trap was rising as well, shaking his head. “I can’t do it if I have to think about using the spear.”
“Then you just shield and I’ll spear.”
It was back, bursting out of the mist, talons gleaming, huge wings spread out to swallow him. Abramm drove his spear into the expanse of black before him, helped by the beast’s own momentum, which drove him back into the ground and ripped the spear from his hands. Then it was gone again, leaving a line of fire across his left shoulder. He could feel blood trickling down his chest and back as the scars on his wrist writhed with the new influx of poison.
Staggering upright, he glimpsed Trap gripping a broken spear shaft, then dove aside again as a heavy timber crashed to the pavement where he’d stood. Rolling away, he found another spear near the bottom of the mound and came up ready, but the veren had already landed, striding now toward Trap, its beak jabbing and stabbing.
Trap backed away, white faced, his right arm dangling oddly, his left held out, glowing with the white of his power, which the veren ignored as if it didn’t exist. Abramm hefted the spear and ran forward, driving its iron head into the monster’s back with all his strength. The creature screamed and whirled, slamming the spear’s shaft painfully int
o Abramm’s ribs. He dropped and scrambled away as the thing came at him, Dorsaddi arrows and his own first spear bobbing wildly in its breast. It beat him with its wings and stabbed at him with its beak, grabbed for him with its talons. Crabbing frantically away, he could not hope to move fast enough, but just as the thing loomed over him and he knew it was going to get him, a stone flew out of the darkness and struck it in the eye. It staggered, shook its head, and turned toward whoever had slung the stone.
Abramm rolled away, got his feet under him, and escaped, noting, as he did, a line of Dorsaddi watching from the mist’s edge. As soon as he was clear, their arms came up in unison, slings twirling, then flapping with the release. A flight of stones shot through the night to batter the veren where it stood. Reeling anew, the creature screamed and leapt skyward into cover of cloud. The mist closed over it, and the sound of its wingbeats whispered into silence.
Panting, Abramm limped to Trap’s side. The Terstan’s right shoulder appeared to be dislocated, the arm useless, but there was no time to fix it now.
“Back to the mound!” Abramm said, grabbing up a third spear. No sooner had they started than a pair of large blocks fell from the sky, crashing onto the pavement in front of them. They whirled to face the veren as it swooped in from behind to attack them on foot. Trap made his fire again, and for the first time the thing flinched away. In the cover of that distraction, Abramm eluded the stabbing beak and drove a third spear into its body. A moment later the beak impaled his shoulder. He gasped with the shocking pain of it but did not let go, and then Trap was beside him, grabbing the spear with his good hand. White fire blared across Abramm’s vision, blasting all else away.
Light rushed through his flesh, pain and purest pleasure, power and weakness, love and terrible loss. He saw a man, suspended between earth and sky against a cloud of dark, ravening hunger that seemed to be gathering itself to swallow him up. Terror loosened Abramm’s hold on the spear, and he fell back, the vision lost.
He blinked, shook the spangles and blobs of darkness from his eyes, and saw Trap still hanging one-handed to the spear, both he and the veren enwrapped in the blaze of his power. The monster was thrashing and screaming, flinging its head madly, its beak thrust open, long red tongue fluttering. Convulsions wracked its body, and Trap could hold no longer. He dropped to the pavement and rolled away, coming up on his knees to watch as the creature’s convulsions quieted to shudders and shivers, and then the last few twitches that gave way to stillness.