by Glen Cook
They jumped. The Witch squeaked. Azel cursed the look in her eye, pushed the pain aside. No time for that now. “You can’t do this, woman. Not this way.”
Torgo looked like he might drizzle down his leg. “How did you get in?”
“I walk through walls. Don’t worry about me. Worry about what will happen if you jump into this the way you’re going.”
The Witch turned her back. Only Torgo showed interest. Irked, Azel demanded, “How did we get into this mess in the first damned place?”
The Witch ignored him. Torgo glanced at her, stared at the floor as he continued work.
Azel spat, “You put them in that damned time trance because Nakar would’ve got stomped dead if you didn’t, woman. Remember? Ain’t nothing changed, neither. You wake them up now they’re going to go right on from where they left off.” He eyed the Zouki brat. The kid looked back. Damned if the brat didn’t look like he understood. Was the Ala-eh-din Beyh soul awake?
Somebody tried the main door. Torgo glanced at it, frowned. Azel slipped off his perch. “They’re here.”
Torgo watched him warily. “Worry about them, Torgo. Not about me. Want to bet they find a way in?” The damned woman hadn’t stopped her preparations. Now she was lying beside the kid on the altar, working on her trance.
Torgo looked at her, at Azel, a rat caught in the open, dogs closing in. “What can we do?”
“Probably not a damned thing. Unless you can make her hear sense. Know how to do that?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Shit. Do your job, then. And hope Gorloch smiles.” Azel drifted toward the door as though considering some rude greeting. But as he passed the Zouki kid, he punched the brat so hard he almost broke the boy’s neck. “That’ll put him out for a while. Get on with it.”
The Witch began to murmur. Near as Azel could tell, her whole plan was to waken Nakar and ask him what to do next. Damned moron. Shit for brains. How did anybody let somebody get so much control they turned into a soul slave, stripped of even the sense to harken to survival instinct?
Something turned over inside Azel. For a moment he had the uncomfortable feeling that he’d glimpsed his true self. As though some impartial observer had asked what he was doing trapped like a rat.
The sounds of scraping and pounding came from the wall. Them damned camel jockeys knew they couldn’t bust the door down so they were going after the wall.
“How long?” Torgo asked, looking that way.
Azel shrugged. He looked at the Witch. “How long you going to be, woman?” The kid was whispering back, stammering, resisting. Maybe the Nakar soul didn’t want to come out and risk Ala-eh-din Beyh’s final vengeance.
He never understood what that was about. Nakar hadn’t talked about his enemies, back when. But a long time ago he’d offended somebody bad and there’d been a cabal out to get him ever since. A new assassin-wizard had turned up every few years, each cleverer than the last. Maybe the gods themselves contended against Nakar. If there was ever a guy who could get the gods down on him, Nakar had been him.
Azel glanced at the time-locked Nakar, at the Witch. What the hell did she ever see in him? “Torgo. You thought about what we discussed?”
The eunuch paused, glanced at the besieged wall, at Azel, at the woman, looked ashamed. He nodded.
“You in?”
Torgo nodded again.
“Good. Maybe we’ll get out of this yet.” If the ball-less wonder really could stick a knife in Nakar’s back. “Looks like she’s getting through.” The kid was stirring, reluctantly.
A stone fell from yon wall. Dust puffed away. “About out of time, Torgo. Can you wake her up so she can take care of them?” The Witch hadn’t responded to his earlier question.
“I don’t think so.” Another stone fell. A hand reached through, felt around. ‘Til try.”
“You do that.” Azel stalked over and drove a knife through the hand.
Torgo tried. Azel gave him that. But the Witch wouldn’t wake up. Azel suspected she didn’t want to leave the trance’s comfort.
The hole in the wall grew. Azel discouraged the Dartars with a spear till he noticed the Zouki brat stirring.
Thunder shook the citadel when the kid raised his gaze to the Witch.
Azel clouted him in the back of the head. “That’s enough, Torgo. We can’t force her. Pick her up. Follow me.”
“What?”
“You want to just sit here and wait for those assholes? Or you want to move someplace safe?”
“Where?”
“Trust old Azel. He was Nakar’s number one buddy. I know stuff about this place even she don’t. There’s a place he put in before any of us was born. They’ll never find it.” He didn’t believe that but it wouldn’t hurt if Torgo did. “We’ll have everything we need to finish up.” He grabbed the Witch’s things.
Torgo looked like a condemned man given an unexpected reprieve.
The pounding on the wall continued. A head poked through, ducked back.
Azel limped to the wardrobe, dropped the stuff he carried, opened the panel, tossed the junk through, helped Torgo ease the Witch into the hidden room. “Let’s get the rest.” He rubbed his leg. It ached badly. His hand came away spotted with blood.
They rounded Gorloch’s flank as a slim Dartar slithered through the wall. Azel chuckled. “I’d say their timing is about perfect.” Torgo gave him a puzzled look. Azel chuckled again. He was going to find out real soon now. “You’re stronger. You lug Nakar. I’ll get the kid.” He slashed the straps binding the boy to the altar.
The skinny Dartar stayed where he was, helped make the hole in the wall larger.
The boy opened his eyes. His face had changed, darkening somehow. Nakar was there. He had heard the Witch’s call but hadn’t come into this world quite yet.
Thunder boomed.
Azel grinned as he hoisted the brat. Some lord of Hell was favoring him today. He stepped to the other kid, lashed out, meaning to break the brat’s neck. He glanced at the Dartars. Four were through the hole now, getting brave, getting set to charge. He gave them a grin, a wave, said, “Good-bye, assholes,” and took off.
Torgo was lifting Nakar as Azel passed him. Azel clipped him behind one knee. He collapsed. Azel chuckled again as he rounded Gorloch’s image, listening to the Dartars roar toward the eunuch. One of them howled, “Arif!”
Fa’tad peeped through a crack in the shutters of a second-storey window of a commandeered house. The Living’s soldiers had entered the citadel. Finally. They had dithered forever. “Excellent. Give the signal.”
One blast from a horn, taken up at a distance. Black figures, like sodden crows, raced toward the citadel. A wagon appeared. It carried bricks.
At least four of the Living’s top men had been sucked in. And Fa’tad knew where to grab their commander. Once the’ citadel was sealed up the Living would be nothing but a nuisance anymore.
“Collect Colonel bel-Sidek,” he ordered. He remained rooted, staring out, troubled. Mo’atabar should have reached the top of that tower by now. But there had been no signal.
Where was he?
Would Nakar have to be paid, after all?
Dartars scrambled through the hole like rats in flight. Aaron scrambled with them, clambering atop men, feeling elbows and fists and knees dig into his flesh as others climbed on him. He tumbled to the floor, glimpsed Arif bouncing on the shoulder of a fleeing man. He yelled, “Arif!”
The Dartars charged a man who was floundering around trying to disengage himself from a stiff corpse. Aaron froze. That was Nakar! Terror held him rooted.
The man shook loose and rose. He was huge. He hurled Nakar at the Dartars. Several went down. The rest hit him. He grabbed a javelin from one and a sword from another and struck out like a lioness beset by hounds. For a moment it seemed he might overcome them all.
Bellowing, Mo’atabar got his men to back off. The big man began to retreat.
Arrows and javelins hit him. He made no sound. He just
looked puzzled, like he could not believe it.
Reyha brushed past Aaron, keening. “Zouki!” The boy’s head hung at an odd angle. She dropped to her knees by the chair where Zouki was tied.
Yoseh grabbed Aaron’s arm. “Come on!” He hardly glanced at the idol as he flew past, into the darkness beyond.
Aaron stumbled after him, averting his eyes from Reyha’s pain, from the scarlet ruin of the big man and those he had slain, from the ugliness of the monster god who still had the power to torment Qushmarrah. He went numbly, without hope, unable to restrain a moan when Reyha started wailing.
The Herodian witch yammered at Mo’atabar. Mo’atabar yelled at his men. Some paid attention. Nogah’s bunch wolfed after Yoseh and Aaron. One had enough sense to bring a lamp.
Ten minutes whirled away, time flown on the wings of vultures. They found no sign of Arif. Hopeless, Aaron trudged back when Yoseh and Nogah went to consult Mo’atabar.
The sergeant and sorceress were shouting at one another. Mo’atabar stopped long enough to order the hole through the wall plugged.
“What’s going on?” Aaron asked.
Nogah said, “It seems that if everything has gone Fa’tad’s way we have several hundred of the Living in here with us now. Nice of Mo’atabar to tell us the plan. We were supposed to go up instead of down. They say a fortress’s defenders always retreat upward. We were supposed to go to the top of the high tower, then climb down outside. That’s why all the ropes and stuff.” Nogah cursed in dialect. “That’s the Eagle. We’d have the Living’s captains and best men trapped like we have the Herodi-ans caught in the maze.” “Why?” Aaron asked.
“Fa’tad knows.” Nogah shrugged. “Ask him when you see him. In Hell. It didn’t work. We came down. We prevented Nakar’s restoration but got caught in our own trap.”
“I don’t want to make you cry, boy,” Mo’atabar said. “But we haven’t prevented anything.” He kicked Nakar’s corpse. “The sorceress says they can manage without this. If they can waken Nakar inside the boy.”
Aaron groaned, began to weep, his calm proving more fragile than he had thought. He went to stand beside Reyha, as though somehow two miseries might cancel one another, a little.
The Herodian sorceress edged him aside, knelt before Zouki, studied him for a long time. Finally, she grunted. “What?” Aaron and Reyha asked together.
The Dartar racket had faded. Azel levered himself up from where he’d been sitting. He cursed softly. Damn, his leg hurt. It was stiffening up, too. And still seeping a little. He drew his knife.
He kicked the Witch a good one. She did not respond. “I hope you didn’t kill us, you crazy bitch.” Damn her. He couldn’t stay mad at her. Easier to stay mad at himself for having been weak enough to get sucked in.
The kid wasn’t unconscious but neither was he alert. He seemed caught on a cusp between today and yesterday, Nakar there but shy. Maybe unwilling to come forward while there was a chance that might mean final victory for Ala-eh-din Beyh. Fine. Let him float. He needed time to work out how to use Nakar without him getting loose completely.
He slipped out of hiding, knife poised. There weren’t many of those Dartar bastards. He knew the secret ways. He could pick them off, make them wish they’d never heard of Qushmarrah. Get shut of them and he could concentrate on the Witch and the brat and doing what had to be done.
Pity Torgo couldn’t be here to do the dirty deed and pay the final price. Now working it so he came out looking good was going to be tricky.
He slid into the shadows of Gorloch’s image, eavesdropped on the Dartars. Some were muttering because their sorceress said Nakar could be restored outside his body. She was doing something with the other brat. Some were plugging the hole they’d busted through the wall. A few were breaking up stuff for the wood. What the hell?
Ah! Now wasn’t that amusing? The Living had come in behind them. And that pile of wood was so they could roast Nakar and Ala-eh-din Beyh.
Azel grinned wickedly. Hell and damnation! Yes! If the Witch’s only choice was to bring Nakar back in the kid, instead of shoving him back into his own body... All kinds of possibilities there. No way Nakar could manage a child’s body like it was a grown one. And it should be a whole lot easier for the woman to get over a kid.
Hell with hunting Dartars. Wasn’t any point with the Living in the citadel. Let those bastards wear each other down. He’d work on the survivors.
He retreated to the hidden room.
The Dartars would look for the brat again. That sorceress. Didn’t look like shit but she was the same stripe as Ala-eh-din Beyh. She knew. She’d whip them into looking. If she put her mind to it she’d find the room despite Nakar’s spells of concealment. She’d been good enough to get through the Postern of Fate.
He checked his leg. Not good. Still oozing. Had he left a trail? He checked. No sign. His clothes were absorbing it. He needed to get off the leg and stay off. But he couldn’t. Not yet. He made a rude bandage and bound it tightly. That would have to do.
The room was a deathtrap. Better move to the top of the tower. Their sorceress couldn’t do them much good if he got the Witch and the kid forted up there. All he’d have to do would be sit on the trapdoor. They couldn’t get the leverage to push him off.
He rifled his pack, found analgesic powder, washed it down with water from a small canteen. Bitterness remained in his mouth. He relaxed five minutes, hoping it would start to work fast. He almost drifted off.
He jerked awake. None of that! They wouldn’t get him by default.
He checked the boy’s pulse, afraid he might have whacked the brat too hard. The kid hadn’t stirred. He was all right.
Better get on with it. He could nap afterward.
He took the boy up first. The ladder seemed a mile high. His leg was killing him when he got back down, the pain powder doing nothing at all. He recalled his impulse toward the sinkhole country. Why hadn’t he had the plain damned sense? He had no more brains than that idiot Torgo.
That one cut was leaking again. It wanted rest badly. There was no time. He adjusted his bandages.
He took the Witch up next, limp as a fish. Why the hell couldn’t she help out a little? Dumb bitch wasn’t worth all this.
One more trip to go, his supplies and the stuff she’d need to finish up. He rubbed his leg and again told himself he could lie down afterward.
He did not think he would complete that final climb. He suffered leg cramps. His shoulder muscles tightened into rocky knots. The bleeding worsened. He tore others of his wounds open. He suffered vertigo. He was sure he had done himself permanent damage. But he couldn’t quit. He was what he was, ridden and driven.
The force within triumphed. As always. He completed his climb, dropped his load, closed the trapdoor, for a moment faced into the rain. It hadn’t wakened the woman or boy. He covered the Witch the best he could, though that was only a gesture. Thunder cracked as he settled on the trap. He’d rest and let the analgesic work before he tried to waken the woman.
He glanced up. Hard to tell through the rain but it seemed the clouds were low and moving fast, swirling around the tower.
He lowered his head and closed his eyes. Ten minutes ought to be enough rest.
Zenobel stared at the cage in the great hall. He recalled the place as it had been before Dak-es-Souetta. It had gone to seed. Become shabby. That was sad. Say whatever about Nakar, he had made the citadel Qushmarrah’s glorious crown.
King Dabdahd hustled up. He had the citadel staff besieged in the Witch’s quarters. He said, “They won’t surrender. They won’t even talk.”
“Is she up there?”
“I don’t know. We tried breaking through the wall to get around the spells on the door. I lost two men. They didn’t see her. That doesn’t mean anything.”
Zenobel grunted. “What about those damned Dartars? Any sign of them?”
“None but their dead.”
Zenobel considered the children he had had rounded up. Were
they settled down enough to talk sense? He rose from his seat.
Carza trotted up. “We found the Dartars. They’re barricaded in the temple. They broke through a wall to get inside. Should I finish them?”
“You want Fa’tad to kill us?”
“Huh?”
He did not know. Neither did King. They had been busy when the news had come. “He sealed the gateway behind us. Bricked it up. Only way we can get out is through the windows. If the drop doesn’t kill us his archers will.”
King went pale. Carza looked bewildered.
“You don’t get it? Al-Akla has done it again, this time to Herod and us both. Bel-Sidek wouldn’t laugh at fools but he’s sure won the right. He warned us.”
Carza just frowned. It surpassed him. “We have a mission, Zenobel. A holy mission. If you won’t carry it out I will.”
“Go ahead. Waste all the lives you want. I don’t care anymore. Nothing we do will change anything now.”
Bel-Sidek did not look around when the Dartar arrived. The nomad was polite. “Fa’tad would like to see you, sir.” The steel wore a velvet mask.
Bel-Sidek took Meryel’s hand. “If I’m to be executed let it be done here where I’ve known my only happiness.”
“Fa’tad has no wish to slay anyone, sir. He said only that he wishes to speak with you.”
Meryel squeezed bel-Sidek’s hand gently. “Go, Sisu. Maybe you can do something yet.”
Bel-Sidek nodded, though he doubted it. Wearily, he followed the Dartar out into the rain. Maybe Fa’tad did just want to talk. He had sent only the one man.
The day was nearly gone. Very little light remained. The clouds hung low above the citadel, turning and churning. He could not get interested. It had been a day as long as forever piled on a week a hundred times as long as that. The end was in sight now. At last.
Qushmarrah was passing into a new age-not that which he and the General had envisioned. “Warrior. Have they finished Nakar yet?”
His companion drew in upon himself. “I can’t say, sir. There’s been no word from our men inside the citadel.” Later, he added, “Nor any from yours.”
“Oh.” That did not sound good. Bel-Sidek eyed those busy clouds for as long as he could take the rain in his face. Nakar’s last hour had come during a ferocious rain, with clouds whirling around the citadel. He had been a prisoner elsewhere then, but... Hadn’t it been something like this? Was this precursive of the resurrection of the Abomination?
