Eschar paused then, a slightly puzzled expression looking out of place on the demon's horrendous visage. He said, "Wait. You numbered one more..."
Screaming in sudden fury, the horned demon whirled and raced toward the open mouth of the white dome.
¦©• ¦©¦ ¦©¦ ¦©¦ ¦©•
Marrec ran along a narrowing corridor of egg-shell white. Like the inside of a conch shell, the corridor seemed to whirl ever closer to some still-hidden center. Marrec became certain that the dome's interior was somewhat larger than the exterior promised. The sounds of his friends' struggle against Eschar quickly faded behind him. Then the sounds of his muffled footfall on the hard surface competed only with the beat of surging blood in his ears as his heart hammered.
He nearly tripped when Justlance finally, tardily, materialized in his grip. Good, he needed the light that still radiated from its tip.
Marrec couldn't decide how many full circuits he'd made, each one smaller than the last, but he guessed about nine, when he came to the inmost chamber.
Also dome shaped, rising to a height of at least twenty feet, the chamber was mostly empty.
Nine pedestals graced the periphery of the circular room. The pedestals, equidistantly spaced, stood at the edges of a nine-pointed star inscribed in red across the floor. Most of the pedestals were empty, though each contained a hollow concavity, apparently sized to accept strangely shaped amulets, tools, or other implements that Marrec didn't want to spend time attempting to imagine.
Five of the pedestals contained items, though to the cleric's unpracticed eye it seemed that only one of those items was actually the object meant to be housed; none of the other objects fit its particular hollow, shelf, or hangar so snugly. It was a night black cloak, so dark that it seemed a void, which was draped across a perfectly shaped hangar.
The other four items included a dagger made from a red talon, an orb of hazy green set in a golden ring, a sword seemingly forged of pale bone, and a chunk of
white, translucent crystal in which something dark was caught.
What had the Queen Abiding said? "You'll know it when you see it" or some such.
He sprinted across the floor to the pedestal holding the crystal chunk. Hefting it, his fingers were immediately chilled, and condensation formed, dripping off his hand He gazed into the object, studying that which was caught within. Marrec's eyes couldn't seem to focus on it First a smear, then some great winged thing it seemed, then a wriggling worm, then back to a dark imperfection.
The crystal had to be it. He clutched it close. Marrec's eyes fell across the other items stored in the chamber, obviously precious bits gathered by Eschar. He suspected that all were tainted by association with the failed Nar race. Look what came of them for their congress with demons, he thought. With his single prize, he dashed from the room.
The cleric made to retrace his route, circling outward, but leaving the room immediately spit him into the great cavern. He stood before the open mouth of the dome at the center of the Sighing Vault a little off balance; Marrec's body thought it should be racing around in wider circles, as it had on entering the dome.
His eyes were filled with the form of Eschar, who was upon him.
Fallon nearly stumbled, his foot catching across the lintel of the dark room into which he pulled himself and Ash. He had a sense that something was following behind him. Too far to see and hear directly, but the elf could sense something closing on him. He hadn't heard or smelled anything specific or seen a betraying light, but a mixture of subtle clues colluded. The sum of those clues was inescapable, though he knew most people would never know they had become quarry until too late. His sense was accurate enough for him to discern that that which hunted him was not the group sent out by the Nentyarch that had trailed him earlier through that thoroughly inexplicable extradimensional space. Fallon's pursuer was something far more implacable.
After all, despite his betrayal of the Nentyarch, he was a hunter trained by the Circle of
Leth. His skills were considerable in their own right, even though their use was no longer sanctioned. Oh well, time for yet more unsanctioned activity, he decided.
Fallon adjusted the shade on his hooded lantern to a wider aperture, allowing the finger-thin gleam of light to widen to a cone of amber radiance. His elven eyes, sensitive beyond those of men, studied that which was revealed.
The side chamber glittered in the increased light. Some sort of white dust, like particles of salt, coated the floor, walls, and even the ceiling. Lumps under a powdery coating were scattered across the floor of the chamber. Most of the lumps were fist-sized, but a few were larger, half a foot across bigger. The largest was an elongated lump almost six feet long and a little over a foot wide, though it was tapered at each end.
Another exit poked through the far wall of the small chamber. The dusty covering seemed thicker over there.
Stepping carefully, Fallon approached the largest lump. Brushing away some of the coating, which shifted and flowed as if in truth sea salt, Fallon's suspicion was confirmed: a completely desiccated humanoid body, mummified and shrunken beneath an ancient cocoon of material. The elf doubted the whitish powder was salt in truth, but a remnant of something more insidious. He didn't have the stomach to investigate the identity of the smaller lumps.
He whispered to the girl, who still stood just inside the doorway, "Want to bet something nasty lives through there?" Fallon gestured toward the small exit in the chamber where the white coating was thickest. Ash did not deign to respond.
Walking with practiced ease, Fallon sidled over to the exit. The beam of his lantern illuminated a short passage in which lay a snowy layer so thick that drifts completely covered the floor to a depth of at least six inches. Beyond the passage, the light revealed a wide expanse. His eyes
narrowed, his breath coming in a short gasp when he registered movement in that far chamber—many, many somethings.
He breathed easier when, after a moment, it seemed that he had not disturbed the activity he'd probed with the lantern beam. A good thing—he guessed that it would be a lethal journey had he blundered through the drifts into the chamber. He and Ash would have to go back to the tunnel they had been initially traversing.
The inklings of a plan tickled him. Perhaps some misdirection was in order. That which pursued him had too easy a time of it, stalking a quarry too afraid to turn aside. Perhaps he would "turn aside" here, he thought. Fallon estimated he only had about fifteen minutes of grace, assuming that which tailed him didn't change its velocity.
The elf opened his pack, looking for the implements he would need to pull off his subterfuge.
The creature known as Ezekial swept ahead through the darkness, not hurrying, but like the tide when it changes, unstoppable. A predator by nature, a killer by predilection, and an assassin by trade, Ezekial tasted the essence of the fools that fled before him. One was an elf, that Ezekial could tell with only a sniff, though the elf had some skill in concealing its passage. However, with the elfs scent sighing through his nostrils, very little could put him off the trail.
The predator's eyes narrowed, as it intermittently sensed the other member of the duo he tracked. There was something in that scent that seemed to threaten Ezekial, in a manner not unlike the eastern sky threatening to push back the night. He didn't know what to make of that, and had not Damanda commanded the chase, he might have decided to pass up that particular quarry.
But Damanda's command could not be denied. She was his mistress, his progenitor, his very existence. The blightlord's cruel domination was the closest thing Ezekial would ever know to devotion.
A confusion of scents hazed the passage ahead.
A side chamber gave off the main passage he traversed, like many he had previously passed, though without a valve or door to conceal its contents. The trail of his quarry led both ahead and into the chamber.
A crux of indecision; which trail was the most recent? A few sniffs revealed that the odor of life he followed like a beacon was stronger to his left. It wafted from the chamber, enticing him closer. He licked his lips; yes, there it was—blood. Blood had been spilled, and it was fresh. Ezekial frowned. He hoped he would not be robbed of the reward he had promised himself. It wouldn't be the first time quarry he chased through Under-Tharos fell victim to something more terrible than himself.
The scent milled indecisively throughout the chamber. Living creatures had only recently vacated that chamber, he felt confident, but which way had they gone? His eyes, functioning perfectly in the absolute darkness, focused on the chamber's only other exit. A fall of powder, like snow, spilled from it in shallow drifts.
Footprints tracked through the drifts, leading into the exit and through the tunnel beyond. The smell was so intense that Ezekial was certain his quarry was just minutes ahead, maybe seconds. When he heard the slight rustling from the chamber beyond the exit tunnel, he exulted. The quarry was trying to hide. Though the sounds were slight, the vampire's supernatural senses didn't miss much.
So strong was the smell, and so certain was Ezekial that the rustling was the furtive sounds of those he sought, that he failed to note the strangely regular pattern of the footfalls and the way they did not make an impression deep enough to carry the weight of a full-grown humanoid or perhaps even that of a child.
Ezekial flitted ahead, bursting into the chamber beyond, a vicious grin on his inhuman features. He had to wade through the sea-salt-sized grains that covered the floor at an increasing depth as he moved forward. The raspy, white powder then reached his shins.
If his quarry hid in the chamber into which Ezekial burst, it was burrowed under the massive drifts of white that covered the floor, shrouded the walls, and dripped from the ceiling in strange stalactite-like formations. Only the center of the chamber was clear.
The central clearing, crater-like, held a nearly-black sphere about one foot in diameter. White lines, the same color white as the strange substance all around them, ran like imperfections through the globe. Without visible mechanism, the globe was slowly spinning on its shallow bed of pale salt.
Ezekial paused. Was the sound of the revolving sphere the sound he'd heard?
A moment later he realized not. The sound was that of the "salt" crystals themselves. Like a ripple sweeping away from a stone cast into water, the white motes first closest to the orb, then those further away, and so on, began to stir. They revealed themselves for what they really were, unfurling, Unfolding, and flexing.
Thousands, millions, maybe, of salt-white, tiny demon-lings filled the chamber. They were all drawing sudden animation from the orb, whose eye-like shape peered into Ezekial's mind.
The vampire had a single moment before the white mass of demonlings encompassed him, closing him into a hermetically sealed sarcophagus of sucking evil from which there was no escape, not even for one such as him. He might have used that moment to slide his.physical body into shifty vapor. Instead, he surprised himself by letting rip with a scream of terror—his first and last.
A cry, quickly silenced, echoed down the passage. Fallon nearly jumped at the sound's savage ferocity, its supernatural volume, and its warbling fear. Then he grinned. Fallon had caught something in his trap. He rubbed his left palm where he'd cut himself, just a little, to entice that which hunted him with a smell that he had hoped would make it less attentive to its surroundings.
The Rotting Man had told Fallon, during their unpleasant mental communication, that Damanda would meet him and Ash in Under-Tharos.
While he'd worked for Anammelech, the blightlord had related something of Damanda and her pets.
It didn't take too much of a leap to guess that Damanda, commanded to collect Fallon, would have her vampires in tow. In fact, the elf suspected that Damanda herself was a night stalker, though one of exceptional skill and mastery. Anammelech had never said.
If one her pets had fallen into the grasp of the horror the elf glimpsed back in the white room, that still left Damanda with three of her four favorites, if what he remembered of Anammelech's idle talk could be trusted—her inner cadre numbered but four. Three now, he corrected himself.
When his thoughts tried to return to the abyssal infestation occupying the white room and what his pursuer's fate might be, he shook his head. Of the abominations that lay scattered throughout these vaults, he doubted he had yet stumbled upon the worst. Thinking about any one of them for too long was unlikely to prove healthy.
He continued forward again, his gait lighter. The elf retained his grip on the child's hand. She seemed capable of keeping up with his rapid pace without tiring. As a matter of fact, she didn't even seem to be making that much of an effort. Again, he wondered what she represented. He knew, based on his experience with her and a feeling that was transmitted merely by touch that, if nothing else, she represented something good, something uncontaminated
by poor decisions and something that would not, or could not, recognize the concept of betrayal.
For Fallon, her touch hinted at restitution and perhaps redemption.
When a hint of fresher air brushed his face, he wondered for a moment if his thoughts had conjured a memory of open air. No, he really did feel a faint breeze, issuing from yet another side passage.
Fallon bent, sniffed, held a wetted finger in the air and considered.
"Well, girl," he finally said, grinning, "I may have found us an exit to the surface."
^RfGSTS
CHAPTER 25
;schar collided with Marrec, knocking the cleric to the side. Marrec nearly lost his grip on the icy token he'd collected from the nine-fold chamber.
The demon squealed in anger. Marrec supposed he survived the contact because his sudden exit caught Eschar off guard. The time it took the cleric to wonder about his survival was too much. Already, Eschar's hellish eyes tracked him. The demon's claws moved to make an eviscerating strike. His hand cold on the token of control, Marrec felt his options were down to but one.
The cleric yelled, "Queen Abiding, I release thee! Come, and serve he who gives you freedom!"
Things happened all at once. Eschar's eyes widened as the import of Marrec's words penetrated his consciousness.
Ususi yelled "Marrec, you fool."
The crystal sphere in the cleric's grasp shattered, sending a spray of ice in all directions.
That which had been caught in the center of the crystal remained, hovering, a blot of nothing the size of a beetle, a breath of winter cold expanded, chilling all.
Eschar mouthed a curse whose vileness surpasses mortal ability to comprehend. Despite his ferocity, he seemed frightened, then he vanished.
The hovering blot expanded, doubling, tripling, quadrupling it size in under a second. It rippled outward and upward exultantly, growing in height and width and dimension until it was at least as large as the white dome over which it hovered. The plunging temperature proclaimed winter's arrival.
The Queen Abiding was loose.
Marrec, looking into the void of evil above him, said, "Your tormentor flees. Get him."
Tendrils of darkness instantly grew downward from the hovering mass, reaching for the area where the horned demon stood a few seconds earlier. When the tendrils reached the vacated space, they continued reaching, but not in any dimension Marrec was capable of viewing.
The tendrils retracted. Eschar popped back into existence, tendrils wrapped about his straining torso. The horned demon screamed in defiance.
The pleasant female voice of the queen spoke from the darkness. It said, "I told you you'd pay for your effrontery, Eschar."
Eschar craned his head back and belched forth a thread of seeking flame, which probed like a fiery lance into the darkness' underbelly.
The bonds of darkness surrounding Eschar loosened. Taking advantage of the slackened grip, the demon struggled mightily and managed to escape the bonds completely.
Marrec, only a step away from the struggle, uttered, "No."
He stabbed Justlance into the horned demon's abdomen. Eschar flinched in pain but tried to make good his escape, ignoring the cleric's bold attack. The demon began to sprint toward the edge of the cavern.
Eschar made about ten strides before the darkness rippled then ballooned in size again. In the blink of an eye it inflated across the entire roof of the cavern, rose a storm cloud of night. Then darkness fell. Marrec couldn't see his own hand in front of his face. All was cold and utterly quiet. When the darkness lifted a heartbeat later, Eschar was gone.
Elowen watched with unbelieving eyes as Marrec called forth the sea of hovering darkness. When the void consumed Eschar, she was mollified, but then she realized that the Queen Abiding must be a far more potent force even than the horned demon to have eliminated Eschar so casually. Elowen gripped Dymondheart's hilt, determined to fight to the last, if that's what was required.
The cleric was gazing up at the roiling bottom of the darkness that shrouded the cavern's upper reaches. He was talking. What was Marrec thinking?
Marrec said, "I have set you loose from your confinement, yet I require your service. By the token which last I grasped, aid me on my quest. I must face the Rotting Man. You must help me."
Ususi yelled, "Don't bargain with her!"
The darkness roiled then stilled. Another strand reached from the lowering belly of the Queen Abiding. The black tendril probed the ground near where Victoricus had melted. Where the black wisp probed, dark liquid was drawn out of the ground, freezing as it did so. In no time, their demonic aide was reconstituted.
"Victoricus will lead you to the child you lost," spoke
the Queen Abiding, as unperturbed as ever. "I sense she is moving toward the surface."
Elowen studied Victoricus, who tittered. The demon didn't seem particularly uncomfortable at its destruction and subsequent restoration.
Marrec pressed, "That is a good start, but listen ..." The cleric licked his lips. Elowen knew then that the cleric was exceedingly nervous. "I held the token. I asked for your service. I would like your direct aid against the Talontyr himself."
The Queen Abiding responded instantly, "Don't press your hold over me, human. It is tenuous. Oh, so fragile..." A tendril of darkness dropped and caressed Marrec's face.
"I help you because I have scores to settle. The way I see it, you are my agent against those who have done me wrong. Look, I'm free, and Eschar's essence slowly digests within me. You have been useful."
The queen continued, "Yet I also have a score to settle with the Rotting Man. The pain he visited upon me when he briefly held my token, ignorant even of its power, is something that must be repaid, and here you are, all set to go against him."
Marrec nodded, said, "You'll help us?"
"One last time may you call on my aid. If you survive these mazes of ancient betrayal, you may yet come to the court of the Talontyr. That's when I will come to you, should you ask."
"After that, our arrangement is ended. If you dare to ask of me any other service, I shall enjoy supping upon your soul as, even now, I suck the verve from Eschar's fiery spirit."
Marrec nodded, somewhat shakily, Elowen thought.
The darkness faded over the space of a few seconds, replaced by the natural lightlessness of the upper reaches of the cavern.
Marrec sat down . Elowen moved toward him, but Gunggari and Ususi were before her.
"You've imperiled your soul," said Ususi, "and probably ours, too, with your foolish stunt. A creature of such evil doesn't know gratitude or the value of teamwork. It knows only its hungers and its vengeances."
"I held the token of control," Marrec defended himself.
"What exactly was the token?" demanded Ususi. "I certainly don't know what its properties were or how much protection it provides to she who would dare to use it. The Nar relied on such devices, but no knowledge of their true nature or the manner of their construction has survived to the present day."
More weakly, "It seemed to work well enough. Eschar is defeated. We're alive."
"For the moment," huffed Ususi.
"And we have a guide," said Gunggari, defending his friend. The Oslander motioned with his head toward the reconstituted Victoricus.
Elowen wondered why Marrec didn't stand to his own defense. Perhaps he was uncertain about what he had done. Certainly she herself had her doubts. All the same, she laid a restraining hand on Ususi, who seemed about to continue her tirade. Elowen said, "That's right. Let's go find Ash and the traitor."
"Aren't you listening at all to what I'm telling you?" asked Ususi. "We can't trust the queen or any proxy in her service." She waved a dismissive hand at the ice demon.
Marrec levered himself upright with the shaft of his spear. He looked at Ususi, to Victoricus, and back. He said, "All right, I've been foolish. It was a risk to command the Queen Abiding, but risks must be taken, sometimes, if goals are to be achieved. If, as you say, the Queen Abiding cares only for her hungers, then after all the token must have had some effect over her. If not, wouldn't we all be but drained husks when she descended upon us?"
"Perhaps," acceded Ususi, "but don't call her again. Maybe that's all the additional incentive she needs to return and do exactly what you describe so mockingly."
Marrec said, "I will not call her unless we're likely to die anyway. I am acquainted with such choices when it comes to marshalling potent but dangerous forces." He rubbed his eyes as he said that last, then continued, "So what about Victoricus? Should we go on without him?"
Elowen answered. "No. I think we must put our faith in the efficacy of the token, for as Marrec says, we all yet live. It'll take too long to retrace Fallon's path back to where we lost it. If the ice demon can get us closer, then we should follow it."
Gunggari stated, "If we get close enough, I can pick up Fallon's trail again quite easily. I'll know if the demon is leading us too far from where we want to go."
"Just how will you know that?" Ususi challenged the Oslander.
Gunggari merely smiled. Ususi threw up her hands, shook her head, and sighed in exasperation. "Fine, fine, ignore the advice of your sage. You'll be asking my forgiveness in the seconds before this deal with the queen goes sour, but I need rest. The edges of my spells are frayed and uncertain. I must straighten them in my mind if I can be of any further use. Let us take a moment before you rush us into whatever trap the queen has concocted."
Gunggari said, "All of us could use the rest, Marrec."
Elowen thought that several hours' rest sounded heavenly. Since they'd descended into the dark, they had faced a series of terrible threats. Though they'd all survived so far, their luck was bound to fail if they didn't steal a few moments of recuperation from the never-ending rush of time.
"Then let's rest," agreed Marrec, not without some relief in his voice.
•©•¦©• -®--®- ¦€>
They were undisturbed for the length of their rest, measuring at least six hours. Elowen, not requiring
sleep, stood watch. When all had regained some measure of their full strength, Marrec addressed the demon.
"Victoricus. Lead us to our friend Ash, also called the Child of Light, and who is also an aspect of Lurue."
With nary a titter, the ice demon swiveled and skated away across the vault field. Ash's would-be rescuers followed.
Marrec followed the smoothly moving demon most closely. At first, he walked alone, as they backtracked through the Sighing Vault, and tunnels somewhat familiar. After they turned into a passage completely unfamiliar, Marrec asked Victoricus to slow down. Despite his words to Ususi, he of course couldn't trust the demon, or the demon's real master, the Queen Abiding.
On the other hand, Ususi hadn't held the token of control. She hadn't felt the power that had briefly coursed through his hands when he'd made his initial demand to the Queen Abiding. Marrec wasn't unfamiliar with items of potency. In the token's destruction, he'd felt a call go out, and in responding to that call, the queen had accepted a binding. She would be good to the letter of her word. She had no choice, Marrec felt certain. Pretty much certain.
He could explain his feelings about the token of control to the wizard, or at least, he could try, but Ususi was certain of her own learning, her own experience. After all, wasn't that experience valid? He'd rather not try to explain to the wizard why he was right, only to have Victoricus lead them directly into a vat of acid or some other unpleasantness. Marrec hated eating his own words, especially if fighting off a demonic double-cross at the same time.
Victoricus led them past several chambers, all open to the hallway. A faded chanting spilled from these openings. Marrec couldn't understand the words. He didn't try. By the timbre of the sound, it was obvious the voices were not made by any creature with which he was familiar.
It wasn't too far after the chanting that the ice demon stiffened, looked around, and pointed into a small alcove. The illumination burning on Justlance's tip revealed a narrow flight of stairs, fleeing upwards.
Victoricus whispered, "This way."
Gunggari walked to the alcove, bent to one knee, and examined the floor, the edges of the alcove, and the first few steps beyond. He grunted, nodding, and said, "Someone has recently ascended. More than one person."
Marrec smiled. "Good. I can't wait to see the expression on Fallon's face when we finally catch him."
Gunggari added, "Actually, more than two have gone up these stairs—at least three. One set of prints must be Ash's, they're so small. The others are adults."
"How many?" queried Marrec, worried.
"It's hard to say. Could be as many as four more people, though some of the prints fade in and out. It is strange."
"Let's hurry, then," Marrec decided.
They filed into the alcove; it was too narrow to go except one at a time, then on up the stairs, moving with alacrity. Victoricus, not so proficient on the stairs, fell behind.
5>he caught them just as they left the grasp of Under-Tharos. Some stars were visible through the overhanging branches of the Rawlinswood, but their light was not sufficient to illuminate Damanda and her cohorts as they fell upon Fallon and the child.
The elf hunter struggled in Bonehammer's grip, before subsiding when Damanda caught his eye. "Easy, Fallon. You're among friends, now." She couldn't help but smile when she spoke. Friendship was something Damanda knew of only as an intellectual concept.
Slender Absalme caught the child by the hair and made to lift her free of the earth. The girl called Ash reached up and touched Absalme's wrist. A burst of sun-bight light exploded from where finger touched arm.
Damanda screamed, throwing a hand over
her face. The light burned her, drove like hammered nails into her eyes, but an instant later, the terrible radiance winked out.
When she could see again, blinking away the great purple blotch, she saw that both Bonehammer and Lex lay moaning and steaming, just as her own exposed flesh still smoked.
There was no sign at all of Absalme.
It was clearer to Damanda, then, why the girl was also called the Child of Light. Damn the Rotting Man for failing to mention that particular detail. She snarled to her two remaining lieutenants "Get up, you sluggards."
Luckily, Ash didn't press her advantage. She had merely reacted to a touch she didn't like and now stood quietly.
Meanwhile, Fallon also still stood, blinking, though of course his flesh hadn't reacted quite so explosively to the light thrown off by the child. Damanda sighed. Fallon would retain his use, after all, she realized. She glided up to the elf, her eyes and skin already healing over.
"What were you trying to accomplish, ascending to the surface, elf?"
Fallon took a breath, then said, "I thought I could get to the center of Dun Tharos quicker, here on the surface, where my wood lore would be useful."
Damanda shook her head and said, "You were instructed by the Talontyr to lure your pursuers through the dangers of Under-Tharos."
"I was also entrusted to bring the Child of Light to him at the center. If I had fallen prey to some wandering demon below, I couldn't very well do that, could I?"
Damanda's eyes narrowed. Fallon was too impertinent for an underling. Time to end his independence here and now. She caught his eye, trying to snare him with her will. She was shocked when something, some obstruction in the elfs mind, prevented her. Some influence of the Child of Light, she knew instinctively.
She settled for cuffing the elf. Such was her strength that Fallon cried out, nearly felled.
Damanda lied, saying, "Listen, Fallon. You're alive right now because you've proved yourself to our cause. Don't jeopardize your position with foolish impudence."
Rubbing his jaw, Fallon nodded, though Damanda thought she could detect a hint of defiance in the set of the elfs shoulders. She promised herself Fallon's blood, once he had served his last purpose.
Damanda continued, "We've got to get moving, before dawn slips over the horizon. Fallon, continue to shepherd the girl, so that she accompanies us without qualm. She seems to have taken a liking to you."
The elf hunter took one of Ash's almost limp hands and did not trigger a burst of destroying light. That settled it; she'd have to let Fallon live until they got Ash into the presence of the Rotting Man.
"We'll continue on the surface for a bit, since we're here; it will be quicker. We'll go to ground in a little place I know ahead, before the sun rises."
Fallon glanced from her, to Bonehammer, to Lex, and finally to where Absalme had been destroyed by direct contact with Ash's light. Damanda didn't doubt the elf had recognized their nature. Good. In her long experience, such recognition inspired fear and obedience.
¦©¦<§>¦ ¦©¦•©¦ -©¦
Fallon followed behind the slender woman with purple hair that Damanda had called Lex, pulling Ash gently with one hand. Damanda broke the trail ahead of Lex, using techniques that the elf hunter recognized in his own woodcraft. The hulking Bonehammer walked behind, ensuring that Fallon didn't try to run off into the woods, though he hoped that he had convinced the vampires that his loyalties lay with them.
Dawn threatened to break within the hour. As each
increment of time passed, he could sense the tension of the three rising. Of course, he'd known immediately what they were long before they'd caught him. Unfortunately, he hadn't been in a position to lay a trap like he was able to do against the first lone vampiric seeker. He'd decided that his best chance for survival lay in pretending that his loyalty to the Rotting Man had never wavered.
Fallon believed he'd pulled off his ruse, though the blightlord had tried to dominate his will anyway. He had Ash's earlier expulsion of the Rotting Man's control to thank for his continued resistance. He squeezed her hand in thanks, though of course Ash didn't respond.
As he walked along, he began to wonder what he had gained really. If he truly wished to protect Ash, he would have to make some sort of break for it and fight these creatures. The more they drew him into their power and the closer they ventured into the Rotting Man's territory, the less likely he could fight his way free with his and Ash's life intact. Perhaps he should just attack Damanda right then?
He continued to debate with himself as they walked.
They had already traveled for a few hours through the forest. He thought it interesting that Damanda made no effort to hide their passage. It either meant that she no longer feared being followed by Marrec's group, or that she actively wished the trail be found, like a lure.
Fallon ventured, "What of the cleric and his friends, then? Did demons get them after all?"
Starlight revealed a slight shrug from Damanda ahead. She said, "Perhaps, but when we find the sanctuary I know of, we'll make preparations, just in case."
Fallon knew that the blightlord wouldn't waste energy on such 'preparations' unless she knew there was a good chance that such an energy expenditure during daylight would have a payoff. That meant that Marrec, Elowen, and the others—he couldn't recall their names—might very well be on their trail.
This meant that he might have allies at his back, allies who hated him and probably wanted to kill him, to be sure, but allies all the same. He wondered what he might do to slow the vampires' progress to give those he hoped were behind a chance to catch up.
They broke out into a large clearing. The orange light of advancing dawn revealed a large, mausoleum-like stone building in the clearing's center. Thick undergrowth partially hid the entrance.
"What is it?" wondered Lex, speaking for the first time. Her voice sounded like a squealing hinge, irritating and penetrating.
"It is an old Nar hermitage," said Damanda, sounding pleased. "I found it on a map the Talontyr keeps in his library. When we followed our missing morsel... er, friend, up to the surface, I decided we'd get back to the Close quicker if we took an overland route. I knew this structure would be around here."
Lex grunted acknowledgement, looking at the lightening sky.
They entered the dark building.
None of the vampires commented when Fallon picked up a length of dead branch before pulling Ash after him through the entrance.
CHAPTER 27
^arrec smiled when they reached the surface. They had lost track of time during their sojourn in Under-Tharos. When the light of day caressed his face, his spirits lifted a bit. His friends were likewise affected, all except for Ususi. The wizard seemed impassive in the sudden daylight and squinted as if in irritation. Strange woman, thought Marrec.
Gunggari brought his dizheri to his lips and played a quick, celebratory tune, which was difficult with the low, thundering notes the instrument was mostly able to produce, but the Oslander managed to sound a cheery refrain.
Elowen clapped the man on the shoulder when he finished. "What was that tune called?" she asked.
"'Welcome to the Morning.' It seemed appropriate."
Marrec said, "Not morning too far along, by the light." Elowen nodded.
"Gunggari, do you still have the trail?" inquired Marrec. With the sun above, even through the filtering branches of the Rawlinswood, they might be able to close some ground with their quarry.
The tattooed soldier stowed his instrument, crouched. After a moment, he looked up, said, "It is clearer than ever. This way."
They traveled then for a time under the boughs of the forest. Where they had ascended to the surface, the forest didn't seem especially corrupt, for all that it overlay Under-Tharos and was nominally in the control of the Rotting Man. They had found a portion of the forest that had escaped direct contamination with evil or rot. Though the sunlight seemed different there than to the west or south, harsher, it was sunlight all the same. The scents of pine and fir were a welcome break from damp stone. Above, clouds piled high along the skyline as they rushed toward the dryer east.
It eased Marrec's soul.
Gunggari stopped again. He looked around at an area of forest that didn't seem too much different than any of the areas they had just passed, at least to Marrec.
Gunggari said, "There was some sort of meeting here. I think I understand now. Two were far in the lead, but four caught up with them, right at this point."
The Oslander searched the ground and nearby trees more closely. He shook his head, saying, "Something strange happened. One of the pursuers left quickly. There is no further sign of that one. The others were involved in some sort of minor altercation, perhaps just a scuffle. Afterwards, all continued, but in this direction, toward the center of the forest again."
Marrec had earlier noted that they had been moving away from the center. Strange. He asked, "And Ash?"
Gunggari nodded, "Yes, her prints remain clear,
clearer than all the rest, nearly. She was led this way." He continued to point toward the center of the forest.
"How long, Gunggari?" asked Elowen.
"Sometime before dawn."
"Then we are a few hours behind, at the very most. Let us make haste."
As they made to move on, Victoricus tittered. The demon said, "I've brought you as far as the Queen Abiding intended. From here, you go alone."
With its last word uttered, the ice demon cracked, and shattered into small chunks. The pieces began to melt in the sunlight.
Marrec said. "It's up to us."
"The demon was useful," noted Gunggari.
Ususi sniffed. Marrec knew the wizard felt otherwise. He hoped she wasn't later proven right.
They redoubled their pace through the forest, though Ususi was unable to maintain a speed quicker than a fast walk for too long, but they made good time. Even Ususi finally seemed to lose something of the dolor that had fallen upon the party after their deal with the Queen Abiding.
Around noon, Marrec judged, Gunggari led them to the edge of a clearing. The Oslander held up his hand signaling everyone to stop.
All saw the lone structure. It had an unsavory quality to it, like something one might find in a cemetery.
"Is it the Talontyr's Close?" whispered Marrec. "I thought it would be larger."
"No, you'll know the Close when you see it, if the Rotting Man has truly taken up his seat where the Nentyarch once ruled," said Elowen. "A great ring of mighty trees surrounds the Close, if the Rotting Man didn't fell them."
Gunggari signaled again, with some annoyance. He wanted quiet. Marrec nodded to his friend. Gunggari must have noticed something. The cleric sidled up and raised an eyebrow in question.
The Oslander moved his head close to Marrec's ear and explained, "The trail goes into that structure. Wait here; I'll check the borders. If I am unable find an exit track, we may have caught our quarry."
Marrec nodded. Gunggari went.
The cleric kept his eyes riveted to the structure, waiting. He told Elowen and Ususi about Gunggari's postulate when they sidled up with questions.
Finally, the tattooed soldier returned from the opposite side of the clearing. He said, "We have them."
"Lurue is kind," muttered Marrec. Then, "Gunny, why don't you slip up to the entrance first; you're the quietest. Elowen and I will follow once you're in place. Ususi, stay back here and provide spell support."
"As if I'd do something different," sniffed Ususi. She was still mad. That woman could hold a grudge with the best of them, Marrec mused.
Gunggari flitted forward, running low but quietly, his dizheri grasped in one hand, his other out for balance. Marrec stood ready to cast Justlance, but his friend made it to the wall next to the darkened entrance without stirring notice.
Next he and Elowen moved forward. He couldn't help it; his chain mail clinked a little as he moved, but he hoped that the sound wasn't loud enough to penetrate the building. Elowen was quieter. Both reached the entrance, spread out on the side wall opposite Gunggari, without anyone inside reacting to their approach.
All seemed quiet within, save for the subtle hum of what Marrec supposed to be forest insects.
Marrec turned his head and saw Ususi's silhouette still back at the edge of the clearing. He saw the wizard's head nod. He asked, "Everyone ready?"
Elowen drew her blade. Something unexpected happened then.
When the light of the sun above hit the dulled blade, the wood began to thrum, producing an earthy tone that
Marrec somehow equated to the sound of growing things. The veins on the blade, which had shrunk to near invisibility, began to pulse and swell, as if sucking the light in directly. Tiny flickers of emerald light played up and down the blade, and the intensity of the sunlight seemed stronger, more lush, around both elf and blade. The elfs eyes were wide with astonishment.
Elowen blurted out, "Oh. The Nentyarch's blade... it wanted the sun. Look, the xylem and phloem..." The elf ceased to speak as she gazed at her scintillating blade.
Marrec tried to shush the elf, but Elowen realized her own lapse, clapping one hand over her mouth. She looked at Marrec, an apology in her eyes, but not without a matching gladness that had been absent earlier. Marrec wasn't familiar with the strange druidic terms Elowen used, but he hoped that their quarry within hadn't heard her wax so eloquent.
Marrec communicated his hope to Gunggari across the span of the open entrance with two raised eyebrows. The Oslander knew what the cleric's questioning stance meant, so he cupped an ear against the building and listened.
A few moments later he disengaged, his face diffident. He pointed into the entrance and silently mouthed, "They know."
Blast. There went the element of surprise. Instead of a raid, they'd be rushing into an ambush. Better to rethink the plan. Why not ambush them instead?
Marrec called loudly, "Hello in there. Why don't you come out? Fallon, we know you're here. Come out, Ash unharmed, and we may not extract the full measure of vengeance that you deserve."
He heard a voice speaking, inside, very quietly. It sounded like a woman's voice, but he couldn't make out her individual words.
Then Fallon's unmistakable baritone responded, "I don't think so. We, uhm, I prefer it in here where it's cooler."
Marrec responded, "Who is this 'we' you speak of? Don't try to hide it; we tracked more than just you and Ash into this ruin."
"No one you want to meet. Leave here. We're not coming out."
Marrec paused, then looked back toward Ususi, who still remained at the edge of the clearing. He yelled to her, "Wizard—why don't you see about flushing our friends out where we can see them? Be careful, though; we don't want to hurt Ash."
He saw Ususi rise and step forward. She looked at him, shrugged, and shook her head no. Marrec wondered if, based on the kind of magic he'd seen her throw around in the past, she was unable to whip up a spell quite so discerning. Then the wizard raised one finger, cocking her head. Marrec read that gesture as 'But...'
Next, she brought two fingers to her face, one to each eye, then extended her hand to point to the side of the structure where Marrec and Elowen crouched. Marrec looked to where she pointed. Solid wall.
Finally, Ususi incanted a spell. When she finished, she pointed to the wall again, a section of which ghosted into empty space. Marrec realized she had created a second entrance. Their element of surprise was back.
"Go," he hissed to Elowen.
He and the elf rushed into the new opening. Gunggari, ever the bravest of them, dashed in through the main entrance.
It was utterly dark, except for the flickering magical light still clinging to Justlance's tip; the glow around Dymondheart was too dim to provide light.
Two figures crouched on either side of the main entrance. One was nearly a giant, corpse-white, save for obscene tattoos crawling across his body. He was poised and ready with a great hammer. The other was a thin woman in form-fitting black armor, so tight and articulated that it looked as if it could be a second skin. An
aura of tiny, biting insects surrounded her. Mosquitoes? Though not as tall as the man, Marrec somehow knew she was the more potent of the two.
Further back in the shadows stood three more figures. Ash. And that bastard traitor Fallon, holding Ash's hand in a death grip. Near him stood a bone-slender woman in an obsidian cape. Tomes, scrolls, and wands spilled from her belt. Close cropped hair the color of dying flowers grew on her head.
Everyone in the chamber turned to look at him, caught by surprise by his and Elowen's self-made access.
Then Gunggari charged in through the main entrance, his dizheri spinning in his hand like a mill wheel. One edge caught the big man, who hissed, falling back a pace. Marrec's eyes caught the glint of two overly developed canines. The big man was a vampire. He prayed Gunggari could handle one vampire, while he confronted the woman in articulated armor.
Elowen raced across the intervening ground toward the purple-haired caster. Good, keep that one occupied, he silently encouraged the hunter. He and Gunggari had enough on their plates without having to worry about spells from the periphery.
The woman's armor caught Justlance's first thrust. She grinned.
Oh, oh, Marrec thought. Two more canines.
"They're all vampires!" yelled Marrec.
"Great Ones preserve me," murmured Gunggari. Marrec knew his friend hated night walkers more than anything else, a hate that bordered on fear.
The woman, still chuckling, said, "That's the least of your worries. I am Damanda—the right hand of the Rotting Man." Marrec knew what that meant—in addition to being vampiric, she was also a blightlord. This fight was going to be a lot tougher than he'd anticipated.
If he could overcome his reluctance, Marrec wondered if his ability to turn flesh to stone would have any effect
on the unliving tissue of night walkers. Maybe a true gift of Lurue, one he had not depleted in the long decline of his connection with his goddess, might be called.
Bringing his spear up in a guarding position, Marrec bellowed, "Lurue commands that you give way, unholy creatures. Turn your faces and be destroyed!" His spear head, its shape that of a stylized unicorn horn, blazed with golden light for a moment, briefly shining brighter than the magical light that Ususi had cast upon it.
Damanda merely narrowed her eyes and hissed. The large one faltered, vibrating with its desire to resist. Marrec didn't turn his head to see how the one facing Elowen was responding, but he could feel its resistance, too.
Something wasn't right. The power of the ritual, which he always imagined as gentle hands on his shoulders, was anemic. If, in truth, Lurue stood behind him bolstering him with her strength, then it was as if she only lightly touched him. Worse, she was backing away, her touch growing ever lighter, until he couldn't feel it at all.
The resistance peaked; his power broke. None of the vampires turned away. All smiled the wider. The large, hammer-wielding nightwalker croaked, "Your god is weak." Marrec groaned, giving ground. The vampire was right.
Damanda commanded, "Lex, spell them, will you?"
The purple-haired woman standing near Fallon began to incant. Elowen closed with the incanter, bringing her blade around in an arc sure to separate head from body, but a thaumaturgic field shimmered into visibility, deflecting the blade. Lex finished her spell, and a wave of violet light expanded from her, washing over everyone in the room.
Marrec felt his joints begin to lock up but shook off the effect. He saw that Gunggari also resisted the magical hold. Not so Elowen—the elf hunter stood rooted in place, struggling, but unable to command her body into motion.
Gunggari made to dash to Elowen's side, but his
corpse-white opponent was too near, swinging his great hammer in deadly parabolas, promising death to Gunggari if the Oslander's attention wavered.
Marrec was pressed by the blightlord Damanda. She moved in, the noise of her insect aura growing maddeningly loud. Recovering more quickly from his failed attempt to turn back the vampires than Damanda expected, he thrust forward with Justlance.
The tip bit deep, momentarily dimming the light in the room, then it was nearly torn from Marrec's hand as Damanda twisted back. She swiped at him with one hand—no, it was some sort of clawed or bladed gauntlet composed of darkness itself. The blade caught him along the side, scoring his flesh, but not mortally. Both combatants staggered back a pace. Marrec observed Damanda's wound begin to knit in a way that his own did not.
The blightlord grinned, her teeth again prominent. She pointed at him. The insect mass swarming around her bulged, sending a filament of biting mosquitoes his way. Marrec expected that the insects, like their master, were vampiric.
The mosquitoes would suck him dry in seconds if he didn't do something...
He called upon his secret heritage. He found it lurking just behind his eyes like a hound eager to be let out. Marrec complied, focusing his attention on the swarm as if a single entity. For a moment, he felt a connection between himself and the tiny points of hunger, but in the very instant the connection was made, it was transformed and snuffed out. A hail of tiny stones fell as one from the air, shattering into so much dust. Damanda's insect aura was stripped from her with Marrec's glance. A pain lanced Marrec's eyes like before. A weakness suffused him; he knew that his ability to call on his deplorable heritage was depleted for now.
Despite the pain and the blood trickling from the corners of his eyes, Marrec smiled at Damanda.
Not so the blightlord. She yelled, "What's this? A medusa posing as a human?"
A shadow occluded the doorway—Ususi. She appeared mid-spell and with a flourish, released a cascade of brilliant electrical arcs, stabbing full into Damanda and Gunggari's foe. Both staggered and flailed, as the flesh smoked and boiled under the intense magical assault.
Damanda spoke, tiny sparks flashing across the gap of her opened mouth, "Lex! Stop gawking; kill the one you've immobilized."
Marrec tried to get to Lex, the vampire mage standing next to Elowen, but Damanda, still smoking, was on him again. Gunggari grunted with a similar exertion, beating back his foe. They were both pinned.
In a fluid single motion, Lex extruded spindly white hands, claw tipped, from the folds of her black cloak, and grabbed Elowen as if to embrace her. Lex opened her mouth wide, creating a gap larger than any mere human could accomplish, and brought her head toward Elowen's unprotected neck.
The vampire shuddered, pausing. "Huh," grunted Lex, releasing her hold on Elowen. She bent her head to look down at her chest. From it protruded the broken end of a wooden branch, darkly slick with pooling blood.
Fallon stood behind Lex. It was he who had thrust the branch through the vampire's chest.
Marrec blinked—Fallon saved Elowen's life.
Already shriveling and smoking, Lex turned and slashed Fallon with her razor sharp claws. In a spray of blood, both went down, Lex crumbling and Fallon grasping at his neck.
Marrec's gaze, Ususi's unexpected assault, Fallon's betrayal, and Lex's destruction was enough for the blightlord. She pulled a rolled parchment from her belt with one hand while reaching out to tap her last remaining follower with the other. She began uttering the arcane words inscribed upon the parchment in short, clipped breaths.
Marrec threw Justlance. The spear screamed through the empty air that a moment earlier contained its intended target. Damanda was gone, likely back to the court of the Rotting Man.
On the ground where he'd fallen, Fallon struggled, gasping. Marrec and Gunggari rushed across the chamber, Marrec to Ash's side, Gunggari to kneel next to Fallon. Ususi stepped tentatively into the chamber, looking around suspiciously. Elowen, still standing stiffly, groaned and tried to move her arms. She managed to do so, if somewhat clumsily. The compulsion was apparently lifting.
"Are you ok, girl?" Marrec asked Ash, inspecting her for bruise, blemish, or other sign of poor treatment. Ash was unmarked. He hugged her close.
Gunggari inspected Fallon's bleeding neck wound. He said, "Marrec, his wounds are beyond simple tending, and the Nentyarch's satchel is empty of healing balms."
Marrec knew that Gunggari, in speaking of his satchel, was actually asking if Marrec retained any healing grace. Marrec met his friend's eyes, shaking his head. The cleric remembered seeing named vials in the satchel, one of which contained his own name, but none had contained Fallon's name. Disengaging from Ash, he bent, too, at Fallon's side.
Fallon looked up at Marrec, whispered, "I should never have taken the girl. I am sorry..." He stopped, coughing blood.
The unicorn warrior said, "It was a brave thing you did, just now. In the end, you chose right."
Fallon, breathing shallowly, smiled then said, "I know."
He breathed his last, a smile frozen on his unmoving lips.
Marrec gently closed the elfs staring eyes. "May Lurue grant you redemption."
Damanda and Bonehammer fell from a height of over ten feet. Damanda corrected, landing on her feet with perfect grace, though Bonehammer stumbled and fell heavily onto a pile of crumbled brick.
She had panicked. She had used her emergency escape scroll, as unreliable as it was, when things turned sour. Luck was with them. Despite the scroll having been scribed by Lex years earlier, and Damanda's only passing facility with the arts of wizardry, both she and Bonehammer made the uncertain transit and in' full possession of their limbs.
Shafts of afternoon light bored into the chamber from two high punctures in the ceiling. Luckily, neither of them had appeared beneath those rough apertures. Damanda had picked the bastion of retreat the very moment Lex had
penned the scroll, of course. A fortified but empty building in the middle of the Dun Tharos ruins still above ground, it had seemed unlikely to fall into disrepair after having stood for so many centuries. It was near the Close but not in it, in case it was from the Rotting Man she had to use her escape. Despite the odds, in the intervening time the structure had moldered and fallen into further disrepair. That would teach her for choosing an above-ground retreat. Of course, she couldn't repeat her mistake even if she wished. Lex had been destroyed by that prince of betrayal, Fallon.
Damanda roundly cursed the elf, envying the Rotting Man his way with words and ancient languages but making do with her own obscene vernacular. At least Lex had slashed the little bastard as she fell. Damanda knew lethal blows. She doubted she'd see Fallon again.
"What now, Damanda?" inquired Bonehammer, already back on his feet. With the light of day so close, the wounds given by that odd dark man with the strange war club were not mending as quickly as they should.
Damanda considered her minion's question. She said, "The Talontyr once told me that the cleric and his band would bring the Child to him of their own accord. If that is true, we merely need to arrange an ambush of such magnitude that nothing can survive it; well, we want the girl to survive, of course."
"Perhaps we should refrain from setting an ambush, if they're going to come to the Rotting Man anyway."
"I'd rather the Talontyr receive the girl from the hands of his trusted lieutenant."
Bonehammer nodded; he was nothing if not a yes man to Damanda's will.
While the sun remained above, they were trapped there in her emergency redoubt. On the one hand the building stood within sight of the Close itself. Once darkness fell, she'd raise an army. In a few hours, she'd gather hundreds of blighted volodnis, twig-blights, and other
rot spawned creatures. She knew all the passages, all the ways that the Close could be accessed, both above and below ground. If the cleric pressed ahead with his fool's errand, they'd be caught and flayed, there was no doubt in her mind.
First, a bit of rest. Activity during the day, even spared direct light, was taxing. Yes, a bit of a lie-down was called for, she decided. Soon, in just a few hours, the sun would dip below the horizon. Then her full powers would return. Her quarry was as good as in her grasp.
O-
Ash bent, touching the limp form of Fallon on the forehead. Where she touched, a glow lingered before suffusing the body. It seemed then to Marrec that Fallon's motionless form sighed.
Ash said, "Redemption he has."
Marrec turned quickly to the crouching girl. "Ash. Can you hear me?"
The girl rose, the look of compassion fading from her face, animation fleeing her body. In a moment, she looked as she always did—unresponsive and uncaring.
Marrec was grateful for the small miracle that moved Fallon to save Elowen from the vampire's bite. He murmured thanks to Lurue. He just wished the betraying hunter had decided to return to the light before he'd kidnapped the girl. Had it been so, perhaps all might now be different.
"Now what?" wondered Elowen.
"We continue to head toward the center of Dun Tharos and confront the Rotting Man. With Ash in our keeping, we may have some protection," replied Marrec.
"Going overland will take days—yet I do not wish to return to Under-Tharos."
"True," said Marrec. He turned to the Oslander, "What do you think, Gunny?"
"Either route has its difficulties. Above ground we'll likely run afoul of the Rotting Man's forces—such was the original reason we decided to approach from below—but the subsurface route seems far more indirect and dangerous than we hoped. The path is not clear."
"It is not," agreed Marrec, sighing.
Gunggari continued, "If the blightlord had retreated physically rather than magically, I might have tracked her back to the center." The Oslander shrugged.
Ususi held up one hand. "Hold on... that gives me an idea."
The imaskari grasped the Keystone that she still wore around her neck. She brought it to her eye, then began scanning the chamber as if gazing through a looking glass.
Marrec furrowed his brows. "Surely the Mucklestones do not reach so far?"
Ususi said, "They do not, but listen. The Keystone is a tool designed for use with the Mucklestones, true, yet it is also sensitive to all magic associated with portals and transport. Perhaps the magic used by Damanda to escape left a seam in space, as such spells often do, though they always fade quickly. I might be able to locate the seam using the Keystone... and there it is!" the wizard crowed.
"What good is that to us?" wondered Marrec.
<S> <S>-
When they appeared, Marrec and the others did not fall ten feet like Damanda and Bonehammer. Despite utilizing a raw, poorly executed, and fading seam in reality, Ususi had the Keystone. With its power, she grasped the unraveling threads of Damanda's escape, wove a new portal, and transported the group into an echoing warehouse with nary a bump.
Marrec blinked—slanting shafts of daylight betokened approaching twilight, but it was still brighter
than where they had just stood. The cleric slowly turned, scanning the area for Damanda and her hulking henchman. As he looked, he kept one of Ash's hands firmly in his left hand. In his right hand was Justlance.
Loose brick rubble covered the floor, piled in untidy heaps in some places. Dust covered all. Gaps in one wall revealed a ruined cityscape, tumble-down and covered in forest growth. Ususi had thought that the endpoint of Damanda's escape lay near the center of Rawlinswood. The mage was correct. They must be somewhere within Dun Tharos, in one of thousands individual ruins that made up what remained of the ancient Nar city.
Where was Damanda?
If she was in truth cursed with vampirism, she wouldn't enjoy standing there, indirectly illuminated by fading daylight. Perhaps farther back, where the ceiling allowed through less light?
Marrec pointed to the rear of the building, lost in shadow, where a slender stone door stood closed. Gunggari caught his gesture and nodded. Marrec released Ash's hand. He looked down at the girl and said, "Stay here." Ash studied the middle distance. With his free hand he unstrapped his shield from his back.
The cleric and the Oslander approached the door. Elowen was not far behind, her blade still shimmering with its exposure to the sun it loved. Ususi hung back.
Without losing time to doubt, Marrec heaved open the stone door. It fell backward, unsecured to the lintel, generating a terrific rolling boom as it struck the ground. Beyond was a tiny chamber without exits, no more than fifteen feet on a side. The light from Justlance's tip revealed two forms lying upon the ground, side by side, arms crossed across chests, eyes closed.
One reclining figure was Damanda, the other Bonehammer.
Before he could get his sinews to respond or cough out a warning, the eyes of both the sleepers shuttered open.
Damanda jerked upright like the arm of a catapult, without the intervening need to lever herself up as a living creature might. Her arms shot forward as her form moved to vertical, catching Marrec in the chest. That supernatural shove bowled him back through the narrow entry and out into the brick-strewn warehouse. A brick cut him above the eye and another across his forearm.
Marrec gained his feet, cursing his slowness. He heard Gunggari yell, then a clash of arms. Elowen called out the Nentyarch's name, as she so often did when fighting. Ususi stood to the side of the doorway, not committing to entering, but chanting and waving in the midst of casting a spell.
The cleric charged back into the room. Bonehammer, lurking by the door, caught him on the side with his great weapon—Marrec barely caught the blow on his shield, though his arm nearly went numb with the effort. He was forced to step back a pace. Had the vampires fought that hard a few hours ago, Marrec doubted he and his friends would have survived. Something was different. As his shield glinted in a stray beam of sunlight, Marrec realized what it could be—the vampires were trapped—the only place to run was either outside the building into direct sunlight or there into the main warehouse where a stray beam like the one that'd just fallen across his shield would have more serious consequences on vampiric flesh.
He yelled, "Gunny, herd them out this way—into the sunlight."
Ususi unleashed a spray of magical bolts that traced wildly arcing trajectories through the air. Many of the bolts found their mark in Damanda's flesh. The vampire was undeterred in her fight with Gunggari and Elowen, but she spared a smoldering glance for the wizard in the doorway. Ususi screamed, threw her hands before her eyes, and fell back.
Marrec hoped that glance wouldn't prove to be trouble
later. He knew about the domineering gaze of vampires.
Elowen growled, "I'll keep this one pinned—help Marrec with that other, one." Gunggari danced back, his warclub landing a parting shot to Damanda's head, which was absorbed with a grunt of pain.
Dymondheart seemed to grab Damanda's attention more than the dizheri. She didn't merely absorb Elowen's swift swings—she deflected, ducked, and spun to avoid taking a cut.
Gunggari was upon Bonehammer, smashing with an unrestrained fury that momentarily startled the vampire. Marrec saw his chance, ducked under his foe's guard, and came up on the other side.
"Now!" yelled Marrec, hoping to coordinate his activity with Gunggari's.
He and the Oslander dashed themselves directly into Bonehammer. Marrec threw his arms about his foe, who promptly turned his head and sank his fangs directly into Marrec's neck.
A fire blossomed there, and a weakness. The weakness felt something like his loss of contact with Lurue, but more immediate and far, far more lethal.
Though his strength seemed to be flowing from him, with Gunggari's help he forced the vampire back, step by step, into the larger, ruined chamber.
The angle of the sunlight was becoming extreme. A few minutes more, maybe less, and the sun would be down, but such questions no longer mattered for Bonehammer.
Marrec and Gunggari forced the struggling, biting vampire directly into a reddening shaft of pure sunlight.
"Damanda!" screamed Bonehammer, as he released his bite on Marrec's neck. -
He began to thrash, so violently and fast that neither man could maintain his hold, but it was no longer necessary to hold him. Bonehammer was speared in place by the shaft of sunlight.
Their foe's whipping limbs moved so quickly that Marrec could barely discern them. Smoke coiled off the vampire's skin, and a reddish radiance peeked from Bonehammer's open mouth, his nostrils, from behind his eyes, and even from his fingernails. The next instant all burned through. The fire that had been ignited inside reached the surface. A flash of all-consuming heat and red light left nothing behind but ash and disintegrating fragments of skull and spine. Even that smoked away a second later.
Marrec sagged. He worried that the vampire's bite would reveal itself as a debilitating, life-draining wound, but he didn't fall. There was still Damanda.
"Let's bring the other one out," he whispered to Gunggari, though the Oslander was already half way back to the fight where Elowen kept the blightlord at bay.
Marrec spared a glance for Ash. The girl remained standing where they had appeared, looking completely out of place in the darkening ruin. The last shafts of light penetrating the building dimmed still further and were finally extinguished. The sun had set.
Marrec stumbled back to the door, bypassing Ususi along the way. She stood shaking her head back and forth, as if trying to throw off a hallucination. Trouble. He could tell. Damanda...
Back in the sealed antechamber, Elowen had the blightlord backed into a corner. The vampire feared that blade; its sap was suffused with pure sunlight, and Marrec perceived it was also made of wood. He couldn't imagine a better weapon to use against a vampire.
"Cleave her, Elowen—she can't heal Dymondheart's blows. You can slay her outright."
Between gritted teeth, parrying Damanda's blows, Elowen said, "What do you think I'm trying to do?"
Gunggari was already in the mix, applying his dizheri with abandon. Marrec heaved himself forward, still feeling weakness flooding every limb. He brought up
Justlance. Perhaps he could pin the elusive blightlord in place...
Damanda screamed as she received a cut from Dymondheart across the stomach. The flesh crackled and smoked as if the light of the sun itself had touched her.
"We've got her," said Gunggari.
Damanda shrieked and spun, put her head down, and ran directly into the wall behind her. The ancient masonry, already unstable, gave way before the vampire's supernatural strength. Hardly checking her speed, Damanda burst through a hole of her own making, bricks, mortar, and larger stone blocks falling around her. Damanda had made her own exit.
Through the breach in the wall, all could see the ruined street of Dun Tharos. Elowen and Gunggari raced each other to see who would be first after the vampire; Elowen won. Marrec brought up the rear, noticeably slower than his two friends.
The forest-infested ruin of Dun Tharos was silent in the gathering night. There was no sign of the blightlord.
Marrec screamed in frustration. Then, thinking Damanda might be playing them for idiots, he rushed back into the smaller antechamber, then on into the warehouse. Ash remained, as did Ususi, who had apparently recovered from her shock.
She asked Marrec, "What happened?"
The cleric continued forward until he stood again at Ash's side. Then he said, "The blightlord escaped, again, but we destroyed her last servant." He pointed with his spear where the final fragments of Bonehammer lay.
"Are you ok? I saw her try to lock gazes with you."
"I'm fine," answered the wizard. "Just took me a few moments to clear my head."
Elowen and Gunggari returned.
Elowen said, "We are near to the center of Dun Tharos. I can nearly see the great trees that surround the Nentyarch's old seat. Great trees, filled with life and en-
ergy, each one so tall and grand that you wondered how such a thing could exist..." The elf seemed overcome for a moment with memory.
Gunggari said, "If we are so hear, we should press forward, before the escaping blightlord can warn her master, and he can mount an answering defense."
"The time has come, eh?" Marrec questioned his friend, strangely reluctant now that it had come to it.
His weakness persisted. His thoughts were muddied, and even Justlance seemed heavy in his hand. He didn't want to come up against what would likely be his greatest test in such a condition, but there was no choice. He would endeavor to ignore his state. It was the final push.
The cleric took Ash's hand again, intending to ask her if she was ready, though he knew she wouldn't respond.
Ash surprised him by squeezing back, as if truly feeling the pressure of his grip. She looked at him, truly met his eye for just one amazing moment. In those eyes, Marrec found rest and the promise of renewed strength. He gasped, but already Ash's grip had slackened to its usual flaccid strength.
Once more, Ash had shown forth her secret, inner power. The strength promised in her eyes grew and blossomed in the cleric's flesh. Marrec felt hale and whole of body and mind. Moreover, for a fleeting moment, it felt as if his nascent connection with Lurue herself might return. The momentary bonding weakened immediately then winked out, but it left a lingering feeling of hope, and his renewed vigor didn't hurt.
"Yes, the time has come to face the Rotting Man, even here in his place of power," Marrec told Gunggari, but loudly enough to address everyone. "With Ash at our side, I believe we have a chance."
"One moment, though," cautioned Gunggari. He looked over to Ususi. "What of her? She met the vampire's gaze. She could be under the blightlord's influence."
"Don't be an idiot," barked Ususi.
"It's not idiotic to enumerate our weaknesses prior to battle."
Ususi responded, "No simple glance by a blightlord can suborn my mind; I am stronger willed than that. She merely caught me off guard—had I been any less strong, yes, she might have had me. What you perceived as weakness was in fact my fighting off her insidious instructions. I'm happy to note that I was successful."
Gunggari studied the mage, no expression crossing his face. Marrec knew the Oslander well enough to interpret the look. Gunggari didn't trust Ususi's words.
Marrec shrugged. Before Lurue's absence, he had access to spells that might have cleansed any taint potentially remaining from the vampire's gaze. He said aloud, "She seems fine."
That earned him a quick smile from Ususi. Of course, he mentally vowed to keep an eye on the mage, too.
"It is time to beard th'e Rotting Man in his lair," said Marrec. "Everyone ready?"
CHAPTER 29
(jreat plazas and wrecked temples devoted to demonic powers lay half-buried in the boggy forest that covered all. Stone, cracked and broken into numberless pebbles, littered the expanse, hinting at tumbled statuary, building facades, and other structures. Only ruinous heaps remained of what was once a grand avenue, overgrown with forest plants. There was an arch that still stood, but it looked upon an empty cinder, flooded with foul water. Stagnant pools floated a detritus of wreckage and age-old destruction, but despite the growth, the crumbled grandeur, and encroaching marsh, the outlines of a once-great city were clear, visible despite the lowering twilight.
Elowen took the lead, but Marrec paced at her side. She had once walked these very streets, before the Rotting Man took possession
of the Nentyarch's guardian fortress at the center of Dun-Tharos. Her knowledge allowed them to find a dry path over the half-drowned streets.
As they trudged along, alert to every shadow, Elowen volunteered, "The Nentyarchs ruled from the forest castle at the center for nearly six hundred years, preserving the Rawlinswood from the encroachment of human kingdoms that sometimes sought to loot the Nar conjuries."
Marrec commented, his voice quiet, "A strange place to choose as a druid capitol."
"Perhaps, but the Nentyarchs believed that the ruins of the old Nar capital remind us of humanity's ability to wreak harm on nature. On the other hand, the forest that encompasses the city offers an example of what might be accomplished with patience, strength, and belief in the sanctity of nature."
"Hmm." Marrec didn't know if the elf hunter offered wisdom or an excuse. Before he could formulate his thoughts into something more politic, his eye caught movement high above the trees.
"Say, what's that?" Marrec pointed to a darkness growing in the sky. Light was fading too quickly to be the natural fall of night. It almost looked like...
"A thunderhead," said Elowen. "The cloud is forming unnaturally quickly, and unless I'm turned around, it is above the Close."
Lightning flashed within the boiling thunderhead, as it continued to grow and expand outward in all directions. The smell of rain, mixed with something foul, gusted across them.
Gunggari said, "The Rotting Man knows we are coming."
Marrec couldn't gainsay his friend's conclusion.
They passed down a ruined street, dotted with pines and potholes, between gaping buildings missing doors, windows, and in many cases ceilings and even walls. Then they turned down a wide lane. Before them, not
more than five hundred yards by Marrec's estimate, was the Close.
It was as if the largest trees ever to grow naturally in the world were all gathered together in one place, trunk to trunk, in a great ring. From their perspective, and with the failing light, Marrec couldn't know the diameter of that ring, but he guessed that the great trees encompassed a circle at least half a mile in diameter.
The great trees were bare of green leaves or needles, seemingly dead. Worse than dead, they were gray and stony, petrified. But they swayed in the rising wind as the thunderhead above began to make its presence known. Or was their movement controlled by some deeper malevolence?
"That bastard," said Elowen, looking upon the petrified trees, a tear on her cheek.
With a flash of lightning and a crashing clap of thunder, a driving rain emerged from the belly of the black cloud. Marrec and his friends were instantly drenched in the water, which smelled stagnant.
The weakening light revealed that the great fortress of dead trees had a glow all its own—a faint greenish phosphorescence—not the green of living things, no, but instead the essence of gangrene itself—greenish black, pustulant, and pulsing. Thus, even with the arrival of night and through the mist produced by the driving rain, Marrec was able to see the forces that began to stream from the Close.
He had thought the great petrified trees were fused together, but there must have been enough space to navigate between them. Like cheese squeezed from a colander, lines of figures squirmed from between the trunks. The figures, once free of the Close, massed and moved down the lane toward Marrec and the others.
The cleric noticed that the ruined buildings on either side, too, were disgorging ungainly figures. There were hundreds of figures closing upon them at a dead
run, with dozens more appearing each second.
Marrec took a pace forward. Gunggari stepped up to Marrec's left, but a pace behind. Elowen remained to his right, also back a pace. Ususi remained directly behind Marrec, but with space enough between to shelter Ash. In that way, they encircled the girl.
As they rushing forms grew closer, Elowen said, "Volodnis. They're all rot-touched, like those we fought in Lethyr."
It was as Elowen said. A tide of blighted volodnis threatened to flow over them, and the rain continued to fall, cold and uncaring.
The blighted volodnis were worked up. They hissed, shouted, and stamped their feet. They broke upon the defenders like a tide, but Marrec held steady. Justlance's tip became a silver flame in his hand like a thunderbolt, a veritable rod of death to every volodni who opposed him. Marrec slew them as fast as they approached. To his right, he saw Elowen make a similar impact with Dymondheart, save when she slew, the volodnis' rotting bodies took flame with purifying fire. To his left, Gunggari laid about him, dispatching foes with his sap-spattered dizheri. Behind him, he could hear the continual chant of Ususi, bolts of magical fire laying volodnis low—sometimes one, sometimes several at once.
They advanced. Through the flashing lightning and implacable rain, the silhouette of the Close loomed larger.
They fought, they cursed, and they slew, and the tide continued to part, and a trail of the dead grew behind. Larger shadows begin to stir on the outskirts of the fight, which in a flashing dazzle of lightning were revealed as reinforcements for the enemy—twigblights. Marrec realized that the Rotting Man must know the secret of their animation even without the aid of Anammelech.
The cleric shouted above the thunder, "We can't fight both volodnis and twigblights and hope to win."
Ever economical in wielding his dizheri, the Oslander took a moment to shrug, which became the initial move of a dramatic swing that laid two volodnis low.
Each volodni they slew allowed the menacing twigblights to move closer through the crush. They didn't have to get too close, though—the ones Marrec could make out were fifteen, maybe twenty feet high. Already some were leaning out over the volodnis, seeking to lash Marrec with claws of splintered wood.
Time for the bargainer to make good, Marrec decided. He screamed out, "Queen Abiding, answer to your final agreement. Aid me."
The sky changed instantly, as if she had been waiting for the call, just out of sight. Where before was driving rain, lightning from the thundercloud, and the sick glow of the petrified forest, there was nothing but black. Tendrils of darkness reached down from that immensity, stabbing into the boggy ground like twisting roots, but more often spearing a blighted volodni or screeching twigblight. Darkness was upon them.
The queen had come.
The void continued to descend. The Rotting Man's blighted forces cowered and screamed. They sought to escape, but the periphery was already void, so they ran back and forth. Vainly they crawled and clambered, packed into the narrowing space like swarming flies, wailing, calling upon the Talontyr for aid. Their cries were for naught. Some attempted to flee directly into one of the walls of advancing nothingness. In that shadow they found their end.
The lowering void contracted. Sight was taken from Marrec. All sound ceased. Even the sound of the cleric's own heartbeat was denied him. Marrec wondered if perhaps he should have heeded Ususi's warning about dealing with demons.
Hearing returned and sight, too. The wide lane was entirely clear of blighted volodnis and twigblights. Neither
the blood, the sap, nor the bodies of those already slain, nor the surging mass who a minute earlier had been intent of overwhelming Marrec and his friends remained.
Of the void, only a blot of darkness persisted, almost lost in the rain-streaked night sky, visible only as an absence when lightning streaked.
The queen spoke. "It is finished. If we meet ever again, you shall discover the fate that has befallen your foes." Then the void, too, was gone.
The crashing thunder echoed hollowly down the lane.
"Forward, then," urged Marrec. His voice was hoarse, rough from the fear that had sleeted through him before the darkness lifted.
No one replied. Perhaps all were feeling an emotion similar to Marrec's. The cleric's relief was tempered with the knowledge that they had yet even to break the perimeter of the Close, and already he had used up the one resource he had thought to unleash on the Rotting Man himself.
It would have to be his petrifying gaze, then, should he get so far, he decided. What an awful surprise it was to him that he would at last come to rely on the evil aspect of himself that he had so long sought to forget and suppress.
Their footsteps clattered on the wet stone of the lane. The tops of the petrified trees towered over their heads as they approached, the branch tips lost in the lightning-rent clouds. Marrec sighted a space between two of the great trunks wide enough to pass two abreast and moved toward the cavity.
They were in. They walked a narrowing path of mud, mold, and mulch of long-dead leaves between two great boles, each as wide and tall as a cliff face. The rain couldn't reach into the tight space, and the sound of the thunder above was muffled. The light on Marrec's spear tip proved the only illumination.
"This is the perfect place for an ambush," noted Gunggari.
Marrec had entertained the same thought, yet they continued ahead unmolested. After about twenty paces, the aperture between the trees reached its narrowest, forcing Marrec to walk sideways. He shuffled forward quickly, certain that an attack was imminent, but no. The passage between the trees began to widen again.
They were through. They stepped into the Court of the Rotting Man.
The Court of the Rotting Man was a great plain encircled by petrified cliffs that towered into the sky. In truth, from within, the ring of colossal petrified trees resembled a steep caldera or crater heralding some ancient catastrophe.
When the court was the Nentyarch's Seat, the space within the ring of then-living trees had been green and filled with garden paths that wound through groves of flowers and fields of fruit trees, watered by carefully maintained brooks that passed around daisy fields and under quaint stone bridges.
With the coming of the Rotting Man, life had moldered and gone to rot. The paths were washed-out mud tracks, smelly and home to worms and stinging flies, the fruit trees bore only blots of poisonous putrescence, the brooks were dry, and the flowers long since dead. Great
holes pockmarked the Court, throwing up great mounds of fresh, muddy earth in places, lending a cemetery feel to the entire space.
Carved back into the inner surfaces of the petrified trees were scores of doors, openings, and dark windows that hinted at chambers, halls, rooms, passages, and alcoves that could lie behind them. Catwalks connected passages from tree to tree. A veritable army could dwell therein: blighted volodnis, twigblights, blightlords, prisoners, slaves, and whatever other dreadful creatures the Rotting Man kept under his sway.
The center of the Court was where all eyes were drawn. In the Nentyarch's day there had been a simple wooden structure built from specially grown and reverently harvested hardwoods. What had changed since the coming of the Talontyr? A great mist, seeping up from the rot and mound mud hills, obscured the center of the plain.
At least the overhanging and interwoven branches of the ring of petrified trees high above sheltered most of the court from the rain, though flashes of light, rolling booms, and the occasional fall of water continued to gain entry.
Elowen pointed the tip of Dymondheart at the central mass of fog. Only by moving forward, into the mist itself, could the cloaking fog be pierced and the center be revealed. They approached it, careful to keep away from mud that seemed too deep, or cavities in the ground from which the smell of rot issued too strongly. Unfortunately, they could not entirely avoid the stench of decay, but by luck, skill, or some other agency, nothing challenged them as they approached to the very edge of the mist.
Marrec plunged into the clammy whiteness, his companions arrayed about him, and Ash tucked safely among them. The stench of rot grew more intense within the mist, though perhaps the loss of sight merely intensified the other senses. They trudged forward, Marrec hoping that he was ready for anything. Again, nothing challenged their approach through the fog.
As they walked, Gunggari opened the satchel given him by the Nentyarch. He pulled forth four vials and distributed three of them to his friends, one apiece. .
Marrec looked at his, "What's this?" though he guessed what it might be.
"The last four vials within the Nentyarch's satchel. I perceive that we are about to come face to face with our nemesis."
"What do these do?" wondered Ususi.
Gunggari shrugged, said, "I do not know—these last four were written with a label containing each of our names only. I inquired of the Nentyarch what these vials represented before our abrupt departure from Yeshelmaar. He indicated that each elixir was different, but each would provide a strength best suited to the needs of its named imbiber. I presume this vial, for instance," Gunggari indicated the one he had retained for himself, "will grant me strength of arm." He shrugged again, "But I do not know."
Marrec palmed the vial in his left hand, retaining his grip upon Justlance in his right. His comrades made similar arrangements.
When at last the fog began to thin, the center was finally revealed.
The Nentyarch's home, as described to Marrec by Elowen, was gone, with no evidence of it having ever been there. In its place was a lone ash tree—an ash tree of towering size, a hundred or more feet high, though still below the height of the overhanging petrified branches, crowned with an oval mass of sickly green leaves. The leaves hinted that the tree lived, but even so, it was afflicted. The bole was twisted, blackened, and terrible. The tree's leaves seeped a sick fluid, and at its base was a massive swollen cyst, partially burst, though the poor illumination failed to reveal what lay within the cavity.
Immediately before the cyst was a throne of hardened but putrid mud. A figure sat the throne. The Rotting Man.
From where Marrec and the others exited the mist, they stood not more than forty or fifty feet from the throne and that which sat upon it, but Marrec couldn't help but shudder when he saw the Rotting Man. To his right he heard Elowen cry out, Ususi curse, and even Gunggari take a deep breath. Ash apparently had no reaction, though Marrec didn't take his eyes from the putrid seat.
The Talontyr was the size of a man, but a man wasted with rot, disease, and madness, from whose pores constantly seeped droplets of blood. The Rotting Man's body was a battleground for hundreds, maybe thousands, of virulent diseases, all of which strove against each other and the flesh which hosted them.
The Rotting Man could not perish from such ravages. Such was the gift of Talona, the Lady of Poison, the Mother of All Plagues, and other names more gruesome. Rot was the Talontyr's strength.
Before the Rotting Man's throne was an altar of rough-cut stone upon which sat a crystal vase. The vase held a slender stem to which a single bone-white petal clung.
To the Talontyr's right stood Damanda, glowering. She had reacquired her swarm aura.
Surrounding the Talontyr and Damanda were various creatures, all disfigured with lesions, pustules, and other outward signs of sickness, though of course in the Court of the Rotting Man, these creatures obviously drew strength from their condition. Unfortunately, the Rotting Man's forces created a buffer too wide for Marrec's special gaze to touch directly upon the author of all their misfortune. Among the creatures arrayed around the throne, Marrec recognized a green-tinged unicorn, a satyr whose eyes were gone but for oozing sores, a score of nixies—or perhaps pixies—each the color of night, a dryad whose ongoing wide-mouthed scream of pain was too raw to be heard any longer, some diseased wolves and bears, plus a few monstrous insects the size of men...
"Ash!"
Marrec glanced back. The child he had so long shepherded was gazing with apparent interest at the large ash tree. Recognizing it. Naming it. Ash and ash...
Before Marrec could comment or question the potential enormity of Ash's pronouncement, movement drew his eye back to the front.
A bone-slender hand slothfully extended from the rotting garments that clung to the Talontyr. The pointing finger selected Marrec as its target.
A voice, hoarse and phlegmy yet resonant, issued forth. The Rotting Man said, "The game has been amusing, but it is over. I will take the child. Now."
A beam of virulent power pulsed forth from the Rotting Man's entire body, washing over Marrec and his friends before any could do much more than blink and draw a breath in surprise.
Marrec fumbled with his spear as his vision cleared, expecting pain, wounds, or worse, but he was fine. Looking around, he saw that his friends were unharmed, too. Of them all, only Ash seemed unsurprised. In fact, she had somewhere acquired a golden glow, a glow of health, vitality, and promise.
"So," said the Rotting Man, executing a look so sour that Marrec's stomach threatened to turn.
Struggling for breath, the cleric finally managed to find his voice. He said, "We've come too far to fail now."
The unicorn warrior didn't know exactly why the Rotting Man's assault had drained away so ineffectually, though he guessed that already Ash's nature was beginning to assert itself. He needed to seize the moment, salvage some time for Ash to discover the missing portion of herself. That, after all, was the reason they had come so far.
Marrec continued, his voice gaining in strength and authority, "We've brought Ash, the Child of Light here, against all the obstacles you've set. We know the girl is
but part of the Aspect promised by the Green Powers, among which my goddess Lurue numbers, the Aspect that was sent to end your reign here in Dun-Tharos."
The cleric knew his speech was too short, but he didn't quite know where to go from there. Ash was not taking any special action or initiative, unlike what he had imagined, except, of course, her mere presence may have been the only reason he and her other companions yet drew breath following the Rotting Man's initial assault.
The Rotting Man hacked out laughter. Chuckling wet gasps of amusement, he finally said, "You have brought her to me, haven't you? All my effort to bring her here, yet where all my servants have failed, you succeed. Marvelous!"
"Not true ... you were trying to kill Ash. Kill her so the Aspect could never take full shape."
"No, I'm afraid not, young simpleton."
"You fought us hard enough just outside the ring of your fortress," replied Marrec, confused.
"It is true I expended many of my servitors, many more than I thought I would, truth be told. I did not foresee that you would make common cause with a demon. If I had not thrown my forces against you, you would have begun to wonder why I offered no resistance here at the heart of my strength. You would have wondered if you were walking into a trap, which indeed you were."
The Rotting Man went on, "You have something that I require. It may be that it retains sentience enough to protect itself and you against my direct touch. However, experience reveals that my servitors are under no such restriction."
The figure on the throne oroaked something to Damanda. In turn, Damanda screamed, "Bring the child to the Talontyr; kill her guardians."
Marrec brought up his left hand, his thumb already flipping the cork from the vial he held. As the creatures surrounding the Nentyarch surged forward, Marrec
gulped down the contents of his vial. Of his friends, only Gunggari did the same; Elowen raised her living blade and gave voice to a cry of challenge; Ususi began to incant a spell. Ash did nothing.
The rot-eyed satyr charged Marrec, its head down and the ram-like horns positioned to smash him. The elixir Marrec had just drunk, fruity and pleasant, seemed to open his sinuses and expand his lungs. The potion was nothing less than liquid revelation, laying bare all that was shrouded, even Marrec's own clogged conscious. Facts about himself broke free from his subconscious and begin to bob toward his surface awareness—but he didn't have time to take note. More than anything else, the elixir opened a door, however briefly, that had been shut in Marrec's mind—it made a connection where association had fallen away over the last few years—it granted him a channel to Lurue's grace.
The blighted satyr collided with Marrec, sending Justlance clattering from his hand, yet the cleric smiled. Not because he retained his feet despite the charge, not because his spear returned to his grip almost instantly— Marrec smiled because unfeigned hope woke within him as he contemplated the array of abilities returned him.
Gunggari smashed the carapace of a five-foot-high beetle, then engaged the green-hued unicorn in a desperate battle—the Oslander attempted to beat the unicorn senseless before the blighted creature succeeded in eviscerating Gunggari with its blackened horn.
The pack of blighted nixies swarmed Elowen. The elf wove a defense by slashing Dymondheart too quickly for even a nixie to penetrate. She cursed when one still managed that feat and promptly bit Elowen with too-large teeth stained midnight black.
Ususi's chant grew louder; in Marrec's experience, that indicated that a spell of power would soon be unleashed. Damanda then said, "Ususi—I command you to slay these who you call your friends."
Ususi choked, ceased incanting, and instead began to slowly reach for the yellow wand at her belt. Her arm shook, and her hand moved only slowly, as if she fought her own hand's movement every inch of the way, yet progress was made.
The cleric began a chant of his own—with his new connection to Lurue, he felt he could dispel the evil influence that allowed Damanda to instruct Ususi. The damned satyr charged him yet again, spoiling what would have been his first god-given spell in days.
Marrec screamed in a fury quite unlike his normal manner, then was forced to defend himself physically with Justlance. Instead of incanting a spell, he yelled between spear thrusts, "Gunny, stop Ususi!"
The Oslander was pressed just then by a growling wolf that'd lost most of its skin to a cancerous scab that made its flesh particularly resistant to Gunggari's warclub.
Damanda laughed as Ususi's hand closed about the Wand of Citrine Power. The wizard drew the wand from its slender sheath, her face contorted as she fought the compulsion.
A shaft of brilliance like the sun's, full and true, touched down then, piercing the mist, the overhanging petrified branches, the storm, and even the night. It fell around Elowen, who was holding her blade above her head, its shining surface reflecting and sustaining the sunlight. Elowen brought the blade quickly down from its position above her head, pointing it directly at Damanda, who still stood beside the Talontyr on his earthen throne.
A ray of citrine probed at Elowen from Ususi's shaking wand. The wavering ray failed to find its target, but Ususi took aim anew, shaking her head as if denying her actions.
The greater shaft of sunlight surrounding Elowen changed its focus, sliding smoothly away from the elf and toward the target identified by her pointing blade. Elowen yelled, triumphant "Meet the day unbound!"
Damanda screeched, backpedaling. The Rotting Man raised an eyebrow in apparent interest, nothing more. The shaft of light slid across the intervening blighted creatures without harm, moving more swiftly as it approached Damanda.
The vampire began to run, but the shaft of light caught her, just as Ususi's second wand-aimed ray struck the elf hunter in the back. In a moment, Elowen was encased in a slab of amber-like crystal, unmoving.
The following beam of sunlight was undimmed and flashed full upon the fleeing blightlord. Damanda's scream was so horrible that even the Rotting Man's forces paused a moment to determine the vampire's fate.
When the shaft winked out a moment later it was established once again what happens when a vampire is subject to sunlight.
It dies.
Marrec, having recently witnessed another vampire's fiery death in similar fashion, recovered a moment quicker than the hollow-socketed satyr. His erstwhile foe sank to the earth, stupidly clutching a newly created third cavity in its skull, courtesy of the cleric's spear.
The blighted unicorn turned away from the crystal-encased Elowen and charged Gunggari from the side. The Oslander avoided being disemboweled by the horn but received a nasty wound across his side.
Marrec saw that Ususi was back in control of her faculties. He'd have to trust her to release Elowen from the confinement she'd created. He lunged sidewise, catching the blighted unicorn with the untainted unicorn tip of Justlance. The contact instigated an instant and dramatic response from the blighted creature—its eyes rolled wildly; it reared, neighing, then it collapsed.
The scabrous wolf leaped again at Gunggari, growling and slavering. Again the Oslander beat back the wolf.
Marrec didn't want to shift too far over to help the Oslander—he needed to plug up the middle, between
the Oslander and the slab of crystal holding Elowen— otherwise nothing would protect little Ash who still sheltered at his back.
Ususi finally found her voice, cried out, "I can release the elf," then began casting anew.
Gunggari's dizheri finally found purchase—the wolf yelped, rolled, then ran off into the mist. Another creature immediately moved to take its place—a twigblight.
Worse, additional blighted creatures threatened to break around the other side of Gunggari, Marrec, and Elowen's line that protected Ash. Ususi remained in the midst of a spell. Marrec quickly counted all that still stood between himself and the Rotting Man. He estimated only about ten or so enemies. With his connection to Lurue back, he wondered if he couldn't catch them all—or at least most—in a burst of holy power tuned to banish evil.
Ususi finished her last spell. With a tinkling of shattering glass, Elowen shed her crystal containment. The elf shook her head, looking around to see what she had missed.
"Hold, my creatures," spoke the Rotting Man.
The blighted creatures paused in their onslaught, uncertain of their master's command. Marrec and Gunggari paused, too, wondering what deal the Talontyr might be willing to offer. The Talontyr was getting nervous, guessed Marrec
"I tire of this game. I begin to think you'll pierce my defenses, and what? You'll attack me directly, Talona's Chosen?" The Rotting Man laughed.
Marrec considered throwing Justlance right then, or perhaps moving just a bit closer in order to bring his gaze to bear, but the Rotting Man continued speaking. "While it might be edifying for you to begin such a contest, it is beneath me. It's more fitting, really, that you meet your end at the hands of that which you've come so far to meet."
The Rotting Man half turned on his seat, still choosing
to sit even in the presence of his enemies. He waved his hand toward the great cyst bulging from the base of the tree behind his throne. He said, "Yes, Talona informed me far ahead of time of the Green Powers' gift to the world I moved to intercept it. I grew the Thieving Ash to snare the divine energies of the gift as it was born into the world Those energies are contained therein, infused with my own special touch, Talona's blessing, and the goad of continual pain."
Marrec whispered, "Thieving Ash?" He looked around at the girl behind him. The child's eyes focused then on the cyst, as if she expected something wonderful to emerge—or something terrible.
The Talontyr, nearly giggling in sudden glee, continued, "Yes, the child there with you is the portion of the Green Powers' gift that slipped through my fingers. Thank you for delivering it to me. Finally! The entire gift is now mine."
"Behold, then," continued the Talontyr, "what has become of the Aspect of Light. Behold Talona's Step-Daughter!"
The fleshy flaps obscuring the partially burst cavity heaved and ripped. A fantastically large bubble of blood swelled darkly from the fissure, and immediately burst, releasing a wave of liquid in every direction. Shrieking, the blighted creatures surrounding the throne scattered before the scarlet flood, though the Rotting Man laughed as the stinking bile poured over him.
Something still fought to free itself from the cyst—something too large for Marrec to immediately comprehend. It heaved itself free of the cavity, showing first a vast expanse of festering flesh twenty or thirty feet on a side, like the side of a hill come to life. The heaving, pulsing body was supported by four wide legs, elephantine in their simplicity and shape but larger, yet the struggling monstrosity, when it finally extricated itself from its woody chrysalis, was headless. It was a vast
mass of gross flesh supported by four massive legs with no front or rear, only body. Except... something protruded from the creature.
A slender horn, convoluted and fluted, but straight and spear-sharp at the end, jutted from the infeeted flesh. The horn was over fifteen feet in length if it was an inch, yet Marrec recognized its likeness from the first. The horn was like a unicorn's.
"Abomination!" The words tore themselves from Marrec's throat. The wrongness of the creature, the warped nature of its existence, the plight of the Gift—it was all too much for the cleric to bear. He ran forward, past the throne on which the Rotting Man sat. A look of intense concentration suffused the Talontyr's face, but Marrec barely noted it as he moved closer to the vast bulk.
Gunggari ran forward with Marrec. The Oslander was more nimble than Marrec remembered, jumping and leaping ahead with new-found vigor. Perhaps it was the influence of the Nentyarch's final vial? Gunggari moved so quickly that he passed the cleric, running up so he was nearly beneath the Daughter. Utilizing his forward charge, Gunggari swung his dizheri around, two-handed, delivering a mighty blow upon the creature's lower flank. The Daughter's flesh rippled, and from somewhere, though no orifice was visible, a basso scream erupted.
The Daughter's single horn slashed through the air with uncanny speed, nearly decapitating Gunggari—it would have, were it not for the Oslander's newfound quickness.
Marrec began incanting a spell, a spell he'd been unable to cast for months, a defensive spell. As soon as he felt its protective embrace enfold him like an old friend long missed, Marrec continued forward. He would try first his newfound connection with Lurue—he would try to turn the creature from its present course, perhaps break it from the control of the Rotting Man.
Bringing his spear up, Marrec bellowed, "Lurue commands that you give way, abomination. Turn your face and be destroyed."
His spear head, its shape that of a stylized unicorn horn, blazed with golden light. Unlike when he had tried this same ability against the vampires, his power did not break. He radiated a surge of holy power, which washed upon and over the Daughter.
The creature's entire bulk shook, and a deep cry issued again from some unseen maw, but the creature would not be turned from its directive. The horn slashed forward, elongating as it moved, spearing at Marrec with a life-ending thrust. If not for the cleric's just-cast defensive spell, he'd have been skewered. Still, the shock of the thrust sent him stumbling back.
By that time Elowen charged the Daughter, too. She came up to the creature several feet from where Gunggari danced, trying to keep from being trampled beneath the creature's stamping feet. Fancy sword-work was impossible—she faced a creature too large for such niceties—it was too mindless to be distracted by feints and too massive for a blade to deflect a horn-thrust or a trampling foot.
Elowen ran up and shoved Dymondheart directly into the side of the creature, all the way to the hilt. Then she began to saw the blade back and forth, trying to lever the wound into something much larger. A spray of vile matter, fecal by its stench, began to spray from the widening wound, but the elf hunter had no time to finish her task. The massive horn, supernatural in its ability to elongate and shorten at need, found a new mark. The Daughter's horn swiveled and struck, slamming lengthwise into Elowen's body. The elf was sent bodily flying through the air, Dymondheart spiraling away the opposite direction. When Elowen rolled to a stop, she failed to rise.
Ususi finally entered the fight, this time on the side of her friends. A ray of yellow stabbed forth from her wand,
but she targeted not the monster but its progenitor. The ray fell full upon the Talontyr as he sat his throne. A flash of amber and a crack that competed with the thunder still rumbling above followed. The Rotting Man was unfazed The power washed away from him with no effect, other than to catch his attention.
As Marrec cast Justlance deep into the side of the Daughter—causing the creature to buck and squirm, but only in apparent annoyance—the Rotting Man spared a splinter of his attention for Ususi.
He said, "You sought my attention—see what you make of it."
He gestured, and a wave of muck and rot gathered and flowed from around his throne, building, cresting and falling upon the wavering Ususi.
Where the wave passed, the imaskari stood unharmed, surprised to still retain her life. Ash's influence still protected them from the Rotting Man's direct power. Indeed, Ususi had moved to stand ahead of the child, even in her fear thinking to protect Ash. It was the child who offered their only protection there in the Court of the Rotting Man.
Marrec glanced back at Elowen. The elf had not stirred from where the Daughter's horn had thrown her. Marrec realized she was out of the fight. He didn't dwell on how hurt she might be. If they were unable stop the Daughter, they would all find themselves in a similar or worse state soon enough.
Time again to bring his gaze to bear. The Daughter had no eyes. Could he even affect that corruption of divine energy given life? He opened wide his eyes and reached again for the feeling in the back of his mind, the core of ferocity, the ember of his heritage. He called upon the gaze of the medusa.
Invisible lines of influence plunged from Marrec's eyes, instantly wracking his head with pain. Where his gaze touched upon the Daughter's side, flesh bubbled—bubbled,
then ceased all motion, as flesh became stone. He couldn't encompass the creature in a single look—he had to paint the Daughter with his gaze, moving left to right, right to left, and in the wake of his passing glance, flesh gave over to stone.
The Daughter reared up. A massive slab of hardened stone sloughed away to reveal terrible pink flesh within. The slab of stone, once part of the Daughter's side, smashed into rubble, forcing Gunggari to skip away, though a few chunks caught the Oslander on the side, drawing blood. Marrec didn't care. His power was overcoming that of the Daughter. His vision began to fill with red, blood pooling in his sockets from the strain, but still he pumped his force of will through the connection he'd made with the Daughter, through the thrumming invisible line of his sight.
Gunggari's wail of agony was as water on the fire of his effort. The force of his gaze winked out immediately. The Daughter, rearing, had caught Gunggari. The Oslander was down. Down, too, came those hideously heavy feet, stamping. Gunggari rolled, but his pain hindered him, and he couldn't roll far enough. The Daughter's foot smashed down upon the tattooed soldier, breaking bones and bursting flesh. The tattooed soldier joined the elf hunter in stillness.
If Gunggari by some miracle retained grasp on life, his bleeding body would soon betray that effort without immediate tending. Marrec didn't waste time thinking about it—he simply ran full out for his friend's side. Where he presumed that Elowen yet survived her contact with the Daughter, he knew his friend would not. He might already be dead.
A geyser of fiery energy poured down upon the flank of the Daughter, distracting it long enough for Marrec to reach Gunggari's side. Ususi was still in the fight and unleashing her most potent spells against the rampaging horror.
The cleric felt for the tattooed warrior's pulse—faint, growing fainter, but still beating. Marrec called joyfully on his renewed link to Lurue and poured healing into his friend, but Gunggari's flesh was grievously wounded. The Oslander opened his eyes but remained prone. He had managed to stabilize Gunggari, stop the bleeding. That would have to be enough.
The Daughter completely ignored Marrec, even though the cleric fairly kneeled at the creature's feet. Furious at the fusillade of spells with which Ususi continued to burn it, the corrupted aspect charged the mage. Ususi cried out, seeing her death approach. She shot a look of apology Marrec's way, touched the Keystone hanging at her breast, and was pulled backward, out of the Rotting Man's court by the power of the amulet. She was gone.
The Daughter, deprived of its intended target, stumbled to a stop, its immense but dreadfully quick legs causing the ground to quake with each and every footfall. Its bulk hid from view both the Rotting Man and... Ash.
Marrec stood and began running in a single action. The creature was between him and his charge. If it killed her, then all their effort was for nothing.
Justlance was in his hand with merely a thought, but what hope did he really believe he had? The creature had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was nigh on unstoppable. What force could hope to breach its bulk and reach its heart?
What physical force... but wait—the beast was born of a gift of the Green Powers. It was a corrupted aspect, but an aspect all the same, and somehow, Lurue was tied up in all of it. Was slaying the creature the answer? Though foul, at heart it must be good. Something that seeks to do good, though it commits evil, can be redeemed, or so Marrec hoped.
The knowledge that was flushed from hiding by the Nentyarch's elixir finally completed its work. Revelation illuminated Marrec, then, like the sun that lifts up from behind a mountain, revealing the plain that was previously dark. Marrec saw a parallel between Ash and himself, and the Daughter and his monstrous gaze. Moreover, he saw an equivalence between any creature that hopes to do good, but through inaction, inattention, poor judgment, or even self-interest, does evil. Does that action, then, condemn such a one to a life of evil thereafter? Does it mean that that one does not deserve a second chance?
Well, no, of course not.
Life is but a brief flicker, and as the saying goes, "What will it matter in one hundred years?" is all too true for most creatures. Life is a short-lived gift. If that gift is not explored in all its dimensions, it is like spurning the gift, setting it aside on a knickknack shelf where other things of little interest accumulate. How else can life be experienced but through decisions? How else can good be judged from evil, if mistakes are not made? That was the secret that revealed itself to Marrec: To err is to live, and to live is to err, but one can only pick oneself up after each mistake, wiser for the experience, and go on. What else is there?
One had to forgive oneself.
The Daughter's horn nearly removed his head from his torso as he skirted its bulk, bringing him more fully to the present. Taking the knife-sharp blow along the haft of his spear, Marrec ran on, rounding the flank of the Daughter. There was the Rotting Man, still sitting upon his throne, concentrating upon the corrupted aspect, possibly controlling its actions, or at least preventing it from lapsing into unrestrained destruction.
There was Ash, defenseless and alone in the Court, looking up into the blank expanse of the Daughter's flesh, as if searching for something. Despite having no eyes or any other organs for sensing its environment, the corrupted aspect paused, seeming to study the slip of a girl on the ground before it.
The Rotting Man commanded, "Take what is yours, Cystborn. Take the capstone of your power and your sentience. Become what you should have been these last six years. My scourge, Talona's Step-Daughter."
The Daughter moved forward, as if to engulf the defenseless child, but slowly, tentatively, as if the Rotting Man wished to relish his final victory.
Marrec, his head still spinning with his own personal revelation, knew that his own revelation applied, too, to Ash.
"I forgive you, Ash," yelled Marrec. "That's right. We all forgive you for allowing the Rotting Man to steal away your purpose, your form, and your power, but you have to forgive yourself."
Ash's gaze slowly swiveled upon Marrec and focused. She was listening.
"Let yourself off the hook—put your mistake behind you and learn from it. Take back what is yours. You didn't mean for things to come to this."
Ash's eyes narrowed, and her tiny head began a slow nod, as if in grudging understanding.
"Enough of this. Consume her!" thundered the Rotting Man.
The Daughter fell upon Ash, absorbing her entirely into its shambling husk.
The Rotting Man laughed. The cleric despaired, crying out his frustration.
The Daughter lay splayed across the ground where it had leaped upon the child.
Then a change came over it. The Daughter's body began to throw off mass in great rotting layers, one after
another, like an onion. Every layer broadcast images into all the living minds nearby—the layers were like records of the sordid malice the Talontyr had committed against the world. The first few were only insults and aggravations. Then came violence and death, and rot followed after. It was Talona's influence, psychically manifest as each section of the Daughter fell away. The next layers revealed the Rotting Man gathering to his side minions versed in spells and foul sorceries. Marrec saw piles of skulls left behind where the Talontyr's forces triumphed; he saw living trees burned with torches, the tree-dryads locked within, screaming; he saw crimes without number, and creatures rotting from the inside; he saw sacrifices made to Talona in all their gruesome detail. Marrec saw the war of the Green Powers against Talona, and the secret plan the Rotting Man and his goddess drew up to subvert those plans and redirect those efforts to decay. Every layer that fell away from the Daughter revealed fragments of the past to Marrec, as if he were remembering something he'd always known.
Then the molting layers revealed more recent occurrences. Marrec saw blightlords releasing poisonous spells, rots of terrible efficacy, and magical diseases spreading across the Rawlinswood and across the forest of Lethyr. He saw the cruel new sorceries devised by the Rotting Man Seeing, the cleric understood what the Rotting Man intended should the Daughter ever achieve complete integration; he saw the massacres, the deaths, the plains strewn with slain armies left to decay and disintegrate in the noon-day sun. He saw the Rotting Man's hope for final triumph.
Little of the Daughter was left now. The core of rot remaining scrambled like a live thing, trying to escape. Marrec stabbed it with Justlance. Screaming, the blot skittered away but Marrec stabbed it gain. It lay quivering, and Ususi, stepping out of the surrounding mist where she had hidden, burned the place where it lay with magical flame.
The layers were shed and the core was gone, but something remained behind, hiding behind the core. It was washed clean. It was whole, complete, and shining. It was a great unicorn, white and gold, with eyes too bright to look into, or maybe it was a woman, whose features reminded Marrec instantly of little Ash. It was the woman Ash would have grown up to be. Rather, it was the Aspect the Green Powers had intended to send all along. Araluen.
Araluen fixed Marrec with a look from her blazing eyes. She said, "I forgive myself for succumbing to the Rotting Man's trap, as you have forgiven yourself for your accident of birth. Redeemed in our own eyes, we are both of us fit to serve Lurue." The unicorn touched Marrec lightly on the forehead with its crystal horn. Knowledge was imparted to the cleric, and he smiled.
With curses so potent that minor creatures of decay were produced from each utterance, the Rotting Man stood up from his throne.
The battle between growth and decay, years delayed, was joined.
V
CHAPTER 31
The form of the Talontyr shuddered. His skin rippled, split, and something far larger emerged from the husk—a nightmare of slime and liquefying limbs, melting and reforming. At the same time, the Aspect incanted a series of divine syllables. Her body grew in stature equal to that of the Talontyr rebirthed, and a sword of celestial fire ignited in her hand. Then she was upon the Rotting Man in a fury of righteous might.
Groaning, the rotting husk gave ground, but not quickly enough. The celestial blade cleaved the slime-ridden form, splitting it into two heaving masses. The section farther from Araluen continued to retreat, its gesticulating arms spraying gore as they jerked through an intricate series of spell-casting motions. Meanwhile, the split-off portion of the Rotting Man heaved and pulsed—each section retained a life
all its own. It threw itself at the Aspect, its side splitting to reveal a great toothed maw.
Araluen cried out as the attacking portion of the Rotting Man bit at her sword arm, its mouth crunching and slobbering. Light, not blood, spilled from the Aspect's flesh, and it burned the beast, forcing the creature to relinquish its hold, but the monstrosity's incanting twin finished its spell.
A ghastly greenish-black cloud blossomed above, but beneath the overhanging branches of the Close. Crashing claps of thunder boomed in its depths, the sound so loud that the Aspect winced and backed away, shaking her head as if to clear it of ringing tones.
The creature leaped again, this time taking a bite from Araluen's side. Again, light spilled forth from the wounded avatar, and again the rotting creature's flesh boiled in the light, and it retreated. The Aspect hacked at it with her sword for good measure, using the flat of her divinely fashioned blade. Its impact caused the creature to shudder and squeal, but it did not further subdivide.
The gesticulating portion of the Rotting Man pointed straight above at the boiling green cloud. In answer, six jagged bolts of lightning ripped from the clouds belly, each one finding its target: the Aspect. The blast was too searing for sight to survive, and the wind that followed knocked every creature flat that stood within a hundred feet. The shock wave shredded the mist that still clung around the periphery of the space, whipping it away in steaming ribbons, revealing the entire space of the Close.
Araluen crawled forth from the crater that had opened at her feet. The crystal horn on her forehead seemed somewhat dimmer than before, but the blaze of her sword was yet bright. The lesser portion of the Rotting Man was nowhere to be seen. The greater portion cursed anew as he saw the Aspect emerging from what he had hoped was her grave.
The slime hardened, stretched, and transmuted itself into yet another form, that one more heinous than the last. It was a great twining serpent with ebony scales and with eyes like dark pits of space that ate light—twin vortexes of nothingness.
Free of the crater, Araluen again spoke forth ringing words of power and touched her blade to the buckled pavement. A white flame surged down the blade, continued across the space separating her from the Rotting Man in serpent's shape, and flared into a nova of fire. The serpent screamed as its scales ignited and its breath burned it from within. Still shrieking it leaped forward, out of the fire, and still burning, it charged the Aspect. Its teeth were like daggers, its claws swords, and its wings a tornado.
Araluen smote at the snaking neck but missed. The Rotting Man was upon her, biting and raking with his claws. Araluen dropped her sword, and her hands found the Talontyr's neck. The crystal horn on her forehead began to blaze with light, a light similar to that which accompanied her transformation from Daughter to Aspect. The dark wells of the Rotting Man's eyes drank all the light, but there was yet more to give. The light flared; the darkness expanded. The ground shook.
The shining horn pierced the Rotting Man's side, and all was tumult.
¦©¦
When the ground finally ceased its shuddering, the celestial lights faded, the hellish dark cleared, and the thundering detonations echoed their last, the Aspect proved the mightier that day.
Marrec had watched the entire battle, when it wasn't obscured by releases of energy too extreme even for one accustomed to powers of divine magnitude.
With Marrec stood his friends Ususi and Gunggari.
Elowen, barely living, yet drew breath and would only grow the stronger with the cleric's healing attention.
Of the Rotting Man, only the memory of his final words remained, as he fled the field of battle, "I yield only for this moment."
¦©¦ ¦©¦
Araluen was much diminished from her struggle. She stood apart from the others, gazing about the Close, which was visible following the dispersing mist.
The Aspect said, "The Rotting Man is gone from this place, but he is not beaten. Talona's Chosen was chastised, but his power was not broken."
"Ash... I mean, Araluen," said Marrec, "I don't understand. You defeated the Talontyr, we saw you."
The Aspect, having taken the form of a tall, lithe woman smiled sadly. "The effort it cost me to free my greater self from the cystborn curse was not insignificant. Retrieving myself from the Rotting Man's influence was an awful trial, though one which I could not have begun without your timely assistance, kind Marrec:"
The cleric's face reddened.
Araluen continued, "But I succeeded, finally. What power remained to me was called immediately to the fore when I faced the Rotting Man. As you saw, he carries much of Talona's power within him. I had to exhaust my stores just to chase him away. Had he known how much power I expended, he might have stayed to finish me, risking his own final annihilation."
"His strength is unchanged?" Marrec glanced around, studying the edges of the Close, making sure some new incursion was not even then creeping up unobserved.
"The Rotting Man, too, used much of his personal power just to control the form in which he put me. When I burst that control, that which he expended was wasted. While his act was pure evil, this project absorbed much
of his time and energy these last years that otherwise might have been put to more direct use, to the dismay of the Green Powers. Even though I was trapped and separated from myself, my entry into the world did, in truth, slow the Rotting Man and weaken him. Now all his best plans are in ruin. His most powerful minions, the blightlords, are slain; he'll have to recruit anew. His massed forces are scattered or killed; his strength is only a tenth of what he promised his mistress Talona, and she punishes failure."
All remained quiet for a moment to absorb the impact of the Aspect's words, as well as wonder what form Talona's punishment might take.
Elowen said, her voice still weak from her ordeal, "Thank you, Araluen. If the Nentyarch were here, he would thank you, but you must accept my thanks in his place."
Araluen bowed her head graciously.
Gunggari was silent, his face betraying no reaction. Marrec knew his friend well enough to know that the Oslander showed respect through his reserve. Ususi, though also quiet, seemed strangely intimidated in the presence of Lurue's Aspect. Funny—she'd showed less fear when she dumped spell after spell upon the Daughter.
Araluen sighed, stretching. "It is hardly fair, is it? I am finally set free of the trap, but I lack the power to remain. I so looked forward to treading the forests of this world. I must depart whence I came." She sighed. "All of us must soldier on, doing our part, even one such as me."
"Lest I forget," added the Aspect, smiling fondly again, "Please give this to Hemish. Without his strength and goodness, all would have been lost long ago. His heartache at the loss of his child may be somewhat dampened if he can talk to me now and again."
The Aspect dropped a small object into Marrec's waiting hand. It appeared to be a figurine carved of crystal. The figure was that of a tiny unicorn.
She smiled, and light streamed from her form, suffusing all of them The light was more than mere illumination. It was ... empowering. It was the power of Lurue. Within that gleam there was hope, salvation, and an offer of protection for the needy, forlorn, and forsaken. Also there was laughter, the satisfaction of quests completed, and wonder at all things. All who stood in the light knew that each of them, no matter their strengths and weaknesses, was worthy in the eyes of Lurue. Above all else, there was joy.
The Aspect turned her face one last time upon Marrec, saying "Search for the unicorn always, Marrec, and in the pursuit, find happiness."
The cleric nodded, his face stern but his gaze watery.
The Aspect leaped upward, as lithe and bright as a shaft of light seeking to illuminate the heavens. It passed easily between a gap in the interwoven branches above and was gone.
Marrec brushed away a tear as he continued to gaze upward.
"Goodbye, Ash."
IVJarrec and Ususi walked behind Elowen and Gunggari. Gunggari played upon his dizheri, Elowen laughing and sometimes clapping accompaniment. So they continued, slowly, taking the few days required, until they drew near the borders of Rawlinswood, to the south and west of where Dun-Tharos still sheltered in the heart of the forest. The journey back through the tangled forest was mostly uneventful, though they steered well clear of wells and other cavities that threatened a passage back into the Nar conjuries still below. All contemplated their touch with divinity. Indeed, all were touched. As the days of their journey toward Yeshelmaar passed, each noted slight changes in the other.
Gunggari was more talkative, as if the assurance of the Aspect's smile had somehow given him a measure of poise, where before simple
reserve had always sufficed. On the other hand, Elowen took more time for introspection before speaking her mind, though as ever, the elf was still quick to find a bit of joy and wonder in the sight of a growing thing or forest creature. Ususi also seemed somewhat kinder in her dealings with the others, as if some bitterness was finally dulled. The mage was more thoughtful, and her biting remarks had yet to reappear.
For his part, Marrec was simply happier. He was happier not only because his contact with Lurue was as strong and steady as it had ever been, but also because he felt more a whole man for the first time that he could recall. He could accept his heritage, despite its monstrous origin. All that was required was one last remuneration.
It was Thanial, of course, his old mentor—Thanial, who had accidentally fallen afoul of Marrec's gaze, the kind forest ranger, whose stone-entombed body was shattered and its pieces strewn far and wide.
"I've never heard you whistle before, Marrec, and I've known you long," commented Gunggari.
"The tune is rather a happy one, too," noted Ususi, her lips trying on a smile, which was becoming a less rare sight.
"Well, I don't know the name of the tune. I'm just whistling because the mood struck me, that's all. Plus, before she left, Ash gave me knowledge I didn't know that I wanted, but now that I have it, I see that it is nothing less than essential."
Elowen raised an eyebrow, inquisitive.
"It's Thanial. I thought him destroyed forevermore, his fragments scattered beyond recovery, but Ash has given me special insight. I know where every last chunk, fragment, stone, and pebble of Thanial lies, across the entire span of Faerfln. Some are scattered strangely far, but I know even of them."
Ususi began to nod, but Elowen said, "So?"
"I have been given the gift of salvation, and Thanial's,
too. Once I have collected all the pieces, I can meld them into a whole, and once whole, my old mentor can be released from his mineral bondage."
Gunggari clapped Marrec on the back.
It was true. The knowledge of each stony fragment sparkled in his mind, divinely provided, and for all Marrec knew, given directly by Lurue herself, but passed down through her emissary, the Aspect.
-Slit was midsummer, but a fair day without scorching heat. Looking backward at the edge of the Rawlinswood, as it lay lower than the higher point to which they had ascended, they saw the white sun stretching out over the dark cloak of the woods, the light penetrating shadows and turning shadow and darkness to the greenery of life. The sky was blue, but darkening swiftly as evening approached, with only a faint frosting of clouds high above, like white paint streaked across a cerulean canvas.
Yeshelmaar lay not too far distant, less than a day's walk away, should they choose to push themselves, but comfortable in each other's company, they chose instead to set camp early.
As the stars came out above, Gunggari began to play again on his dizheri. The song was one Marrec had heard the Oslander play before, but rarely. A salute to the stars, which the Oslander's people believed to be the spirits of their ancestors looking down upon them, guarding them, or at least available for advice, should they be asked.
Elowen and Ususi were talking quietly together. When Gunggari began his music, they finished speaking and made their way up to where the cleric reclined on a great rock.
Elowen said, "Ususi and I find ourselves at loose ends." "Loose ends?"
Ususi responded, "I have the Keystone, which is what
I've long sought, but gaining it, I have discovered that there are other things, too, beyond accumulation of knowledge, that are worth having."
"What's that?" wondered Marrec, frowning.
Elowen answered for Ususi, "Comradeship. Listen-now that the Rotting Man has been flushed from Dun Tharos, my priorities have shifted, too. For so long I have been focused on the Talontyr, but his threat is lessened. Like Ususi... I find that I prefer traveling with a group of friends instead of alone."
Comprehension dawned across the cleric's face. He shook his head, but a great contentment filled him up, causing him to laugh. "Then, two shall become four. We're off in the morning. First, we shall visit Hemish, to tell him of his little girl that grew up and give him the token Ash wanted him to have. After that, we will search out the fragments of my past misstep. Thanial will enjoy meeting all of you."
Marrec stood. The three, discussing their plans for the morrow, strode over to where the Oslander continued to play. Gunggari's notes danced into the night sky. The stars twinkled their approval.
Lady of Poison

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