Lightnings Daughter

by Mary H. Herbert

  She gritted her teeth, and a snarl of hatred twisted her thin mouth. Oh, heads will roll for this treason! The streets wil run with the blood of traitors, she swore to herself. Already the ' mob and the rebellious factions of the army were fighting the guards still loyal to her. The battle raged in the streets near the palace, too close for complacency.

  The Fon slammed her palm against the wall. It was that damned Khan'di Kadoa's doing. She could sense his hand in this treachery. She should have disposed of that conniving vermin before this, but he had the support of the powerful merchant guilds and she had not been ready to face them in an outright confrontation.

  Well, after this night the Kadoa family would cease to exist and the merchant guilds would come groveling. This night she would have her gorthling.

  In front of her, Branth leaned over the big, leather-bound tome on the table and emotionlessly recited the words of the spel . An aura of power was building around him. Even the Fon could see the faint greenish glow. Yet the man seemed unaware of anything but the book and the smal golden cage on the table before him.

  His voice intoned unceasingly through the long, complicated spel . In the light of the small lamp the Fon could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and a faint trembling begin to shake his frame. Then, to her delight, a tiny pinhole of light appeared, hovering in the center of the cage. She knew from reading the book that the pinhole was an opening to the immortal world of gods, dreams, and powers unlimited.

  Slowly Branth straightened and began the second part of the spel : to widen the door and cal a gorthling out of his realm.

  The Fon watched impatiently. She wanted to rip the hole wider with her own hands and snatch the gorthling into her domain, but she had learned enough to know the evil creatures were dangerous and had to be handled with care and cunning. She curbed her frustration and watched as the hole began to open bit by bit. When the hole was a handspan wide, Branth suddenly stopped.

  "What's the matter, you fool?" hissed the Fon. "Go on!"

  Branth appeared to struggle within himself, ready to say something. His mouth worked, and his hands tightened into fists. "No," he groaned between clenched teeth. "Not this."

  The Fon stepped forward, her eyes blazing. "Do it!" she screeched.

  The exiled chief blanched. The days of drugs and mind control slowly destroyed the feeble vestiges of his will. Like a living corpse, he turned back to the tome and the cage.

  As he resumed the spel , the green aura grew brighter. The magic about him increased, widening the hole of light in the cage. The light grew so dazzling that the Fon had to shield her eyes.

  She blinked once before she saw it.

  A small, wizened face peered through the hole. The Fon held her breath. Branth had lost control of the creature at the same point during his previous attempt at the spell. This time, however, he did not fail. He chanted the incantation, slowly drawing the gorthling out of his world and into the cage.

  The creature came cautiously. He climbed out of the hole one limb at a time and finally crouched, snarling, in the corner of the cage. Branth said a command, and the hole of light snapped shut.

  The Fon's eyes took a moment to adjust to the faint light, then she stared in horrified fascination at the thing in the golden cage. The gorthling resembled a smal , incredibly ancient monkey with long, twisted limbs and the face of a mummified child. The Fon suppressed a shudder as the creature turned his inhuman eyes toward her. Before he could look her in the eyes, she turned away and snapped to Branth, "Put the col ar on the thing."

  This was the most dangerous part of the spell, for the sorcerer had to put a collar of gold on the gorthling in order to properly control him. However, the tome stated in no uncertain terms that the gorthling could not be touched by human hands. The Fon did not know why, and she did not want to find out.

  Branth reached for a long-handled clamp and the golden collar. He had practiced many times with the clamp upon various small animals; he was now quite deft at snapping the collar around creatures in the cage. But neither he nor the Fon had counted on the cunning and agility of the gorthling.

  He zipped around the small cage, avoiding the collar and Branth's best efforts with ease. Time and again the sorcerer almost had the collar about his neck only to have the gorthling slip away. The Fon grew wild with frustration. "Collar the thing!" she screamed.

  At that moment, the collar dropped off the clamp and fell to the cage floor by the edge of the bars.

  Branth, his consciousness numbed by the Fon's poisons, simply reacted. He stuck his fingers through the bars to retrieve the collar.

  "No!" the Fon shrieked.

  Even as she sprang to grab the man's arm, the gorthling pounced on Branth's fingers and sank his teeth into the man's skin. Branth howled in agony and tried to yank his hand through the bars, but the gorthling clung to his fingers, ripping off chunks of flesh and gulping them down.

  The taste of blood drove the creature into a frenzy. He screeched and clawed and tore Branth's hand to shreds. The man writhed and screamed so violently, the Fon could not get near to help him.

  All at once, the gorthling fell quiet. The Fon stepped back, her eyes wide in dread, for the creature was beginning to grow. His body pulsed with a lurid red light and blood dripped from his mouth. In just a moment he was as big as the cage.

  Appal ed, the Fon backed to the door, leaving Branth to his doom. She hoped the creature would remain confined in the cage, yet even as her hands fumbled for the latch, the gorthling burst the bars of the gilded prison. Branth and the Fon froze.

  Still clinging to the sorcerer's bloody hand, the gorthling turned his eyes on the Fon. Across the room, the Fon caught his gaze and was drawn into the black depths of his eyes. She found herself gazing into an evil she never knew existed, an evil so powerful and destructive it swallowed her rational thought and emptied her mind of everything but total terror.

  Her shriek filled the small room. Somewhere in the shreds of her consciousness a tiny spark of self-survival remained and guided her hand to the door latch. The gorthling reached his clawed hand for the oil lamp on the table. Instantly he flung the lamp at the woman as she wrenched the door open with a desperate heave and fled screaming down the corridor.

  The oil lamp smashed against the wooden door, its oil bursting into flames on the wood and running in fiery rivulets down to the floor. The gorthling curled his lips in malicious glee, then he turned his eyes to Branth.

  The clansman had not moved. His face was racked in fear and pain; his hand and lower arm were in bloody shreds. Stil he could not force himself to move against the horror of the gorthling.

  The creature stopped growing the moment he burst out of the cage, and now he crouched like a big cat on the table, clutching Branth's arm. "Where did you learn your spell, Sorcerer?" the gorthling rasped.

  Branth shook violently at the sound of the dry, vicious voice. He gasped an answer and pointed to the book on the table.

  The gorthling looked. "The Book of Matrah? No wonder you failed." He cackled. "Who are you?"

  The sorcerer forced himself to answer, "Lord. . . Branth of Clan Geldring."

  "A clansman. You would be. Only clansmen have ever called for my kind." He sank his claws deeper into Branth's arm. "Where are we?"

  Branth whimpered. "A palace. In Pra Desh."

  "You are not in your own land. Why is that, little chieftain?”

  "I was exiled."

  "Oh ho!" the gorthling sneered. "Your people have banished you. How sad. Perhaps I shal change that. It might be interesting to visit your clans." He laughed, the sound as bitter and raw as acid.

  The creature's laugh was more than Branth could bear. He col apsed to his knees, sobbing and shrieking for mercy.

  "Mercy!" the gorthling screeched. "I know nothing of mercy. But I know that you, little chieftain, are mine!"

  Without warning, the creature sprang for Branth's face. The man fell over backward onto the stone floor, gibbering in terror and
clawing at the thing on his head. The beast clung with grim determination.

  Smoke swirled about them, and the gorthling's eyes blazed in the light of the fire.

  The gorthling's body began to pulse again with a lurid red glow. The being forced Branth's mouth open. The Geldring shrieked one last time in despair before he fell deathly still. Inch by inch the gorthling worked his way into Branth's mouth. The creature looked out once from between the chieftain's teeth and chuckled with satisfaction, then the man's mouth snapped shut and the gorthling disappeared from sight.

  The room was quiet except for the crackle of the fire on the burning door. The fire had spread across the floor and now touched the pile of straw on Branth's pallet. The flames leaped higher. Smoke swirled out into the corridor.

  Within Branth's body, the gorthling began his metamorphosis. Swiftly the creature melded his form into the sorcerer's body, joining his life to Branth's heart, muscle, and bone in a symbiosis that could be broken only by death. Once the union was complete, the gorthling had total control of the man's body and brain.

  In the process, Branth's soul was destroyed. The gorthling stripped his victim's mind of all thoughts, memories, and dreams and inserted his own cunning and intel igence. As Branth's brain was emptied, the gorthling retained a very superficial knowledge of the chief’s memories and emotions.

  One emotion in particular caught the gorthling's interest: hatred. There was a vestige of a very powerful hatred and resentment for one particular magic-wielder. Unfortunately, the gorthling could not clearly understand the jumbled human memory. Perhaps in time he would learn the identity of that magic-wielder. For now the gorthling had other things to think about.

  Branth's body flinched and jerked upright. The gorthling opened his eyes. Branth's normal arrogant gaze was gone, consumed with his mind and soul. In its place was a glint of inhuman evil.

  The gorthling stood up, slowly testing the muscles of the new form he had invaded. Other than the injured hand, which the gorthling could heal over time, the body was basical y fit and healthy. The creature grinned. In his normal shape, the gorthling had no power of his own, only the ability to enhance other forms of power. However, once he tasted blood, he was able to inhabit a mortal body and add his powers to the new host's own abilities. This body had potential, especially with its inherent ability to wield magic. A great deal of damage could be done to this world before anyone became aware of his true identity.

  First, though, the gorthling had to find out more about the people who lived here. In the immortal world beyond the realm of the dead, he had been distantly aware of this world and the human beings who trampled the earth. He had noted the course of their history in a faint, disinterested fashion, paying only slightly more attention to the clanspeople who had the unique ability to wield magic---a talent granted to them by Valorian, the Hero-Warrior and rumored half-human son of the goddess, Amara.

  Only a magic-wielder could have called the gorthling to the mortal world, and only a magic-wielder could sent him back. If he was going to stay here in this big, powerful body, he would have to find all of the clan sorcerers and destroy them. Particularly the one that caused his host, Branth, such hatred. That magic-wielder had piqued the gorthling's curiosity.

  Something crashed behind the gorthling, causing him to whirl around. The wooden door was lying on the floor, consumed in flames. The gorthling looked around at the spreading fire. Usually fire did not bother him, but this body did not like it; the creature coughed and drew back from the heat.

  Then he remembered the woman. She had been standing by the door and had seen him arrive. She knew what he was. There was no other option; he would have to find her. Gleefully snatching a torch stub from a bracket on the wall, the creature lit it. Branth's ruined hand was painful, but the gorthling had experienced worse pain before. He grabbed the Book of Matrah from the table, darted past the burning door, and sprang out into the corridor.

  A staircase lay ahead. Laughing aloud, he ran up the stairs and through the corridors of the lower palace levels, setting fire to everything that would burn.

  *****

  "Oh, gods," Gabria gasped. "Did you hear that?"

  At the sound of her voice, the party stopped dead in the black tunnel. They had lost track of how long they'd been stumbling, crawling, climbing, and scrambling after the old man through the endless maze of crevices, tunnels, and caverns. The cold, damp blackness was wearing on them all.

  They looked around nervously.

  "Hear what?" Piers whispered.

  They remained frozen, their ears straining through the impenetrable darkness. The old man looked back impatiently.

  Gabria clamped her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream as a wave of terror engulfed her. She sagged back against Piers, trembling and light-headed. She heard Tam begin to whimper.

  Sayyed and Athlone said together, "What was that?"

  "What was what?" Bregan said too loudly.

  Gabria felt her heart thudding in her chest. She was breathing heavily from the shock, but the unknown terror was subsiding as quickly as it had come. "I don't know. Something happened. Close by.

  Something horrible."

  The chieftain held up the wavering torch. "Did you hear a sound just then, Sayyed?"

  The Turic shifted nervously. "I sensed it rather than heard it. It was hideous!" He bent down to reassure them and to hide the tremor of fear in his face.

  Gabria drew herself up and tried to shake off the terrible remnants of her horror. "Athlone, we'd better hurry. I think that may have been Branth."

  The party went on, faster now, driven by the urgency of Gabria's fear. The old man led them through another narrow passage, around a rock fall, under a Stone ceiling so low they had to crawl on their hands and knees, and into a tiny, rough chamber that seemed hardly more than a wide crack in the earth.

  The hil man said several incomprehensible words and pointed to the back of the cave, then he turned and disappeared into the darkness before anyone realized what he was doing.

  "Wait!" Athlone yel ed, springing after him, but the man had already ducked down another crack and was gone.

  "By Surgart's sword, I'm going to strangle that little rat if he left us lost down here," Athlone cursed.

  He strode to the back of the chamber to the spot the hil man had indicated and found another slender fissure on the rock wal . Careful y he squeezed through. There was a long moment of silence before his voice came back to the others.

  "Come this way."

  Gabria and the others pushed through the narrow crack, came around some boulders, and found themselves in what seemed to be an enormous cavern. They could not see very much of the lightless space, for their feeble torchlight was swallowed by the towering blackness. A cold silence surrounded them. With great care they edged out across the floor. Only Piers remained frozen to his place, his eyes staring sadly into the dark.

  Although she did not have a torch, Gabria walked forward a pace to see what she could discover.

  Her shin abruptly slammed into a very sharp rock. "This is ridiculous," she snapped. Raising her hand, she cal ed out a command and a ball of bright light formed over her head.

  Every man there jumped like a stung horse.

  "Good gods, Gabria," Athlone yel ed. "Don't startle us like that!" The four Khulinin warriors stared at the light and at Gabria in mixed disbelief and alarm. She looked back at them apologetically. She regretted being so precipitous with her spell, but the frustration of near-blindness and the pain in her leg drove her to act without thinking of what anyone's reaction might be. They were not used to her sorcery, and the sudden bal of light had been a shock.

  Bregan final y shook his grizzled head and tossed his torch to the ground. "Have you got any more of those lights, Lady Gabria?"

  Her smile to him was dazzling, and in just a few moments four balls of light hung in the air over the men’s' heads. Their glow revealed the details of the entire cavern.

  Their first
impressions had been right; the cavern was huge. As they looked around, it became obvious that, while most of the cavern was natural, a great deal of human labor had been spent smoothing the floors and enlarging the walls. Some unnatural features had been added, too: cages, stocks, chains on the walls, a huge wheeled rack, a forge, and several other unidentifiable machines---all thankful y empty.

  "Gods,'" Athlone shuddered. "It's a torture room."

  Without warning, Piers gave a grief-stricken moan and ran forward. In the center of the cavern was a hole, and the healer stumbled to the very edge. He fell to his knees and leaned precariously over the rim.

  "Oh, Diana," he groaned.

  "Piers!" Gabria cried. She ran to him and tried to draw him away. The hole appalled her. It was a smooth-sided pit that fell away into a terrifying blackness. A faint, putrid odor rose from the unseen bottom.

  "She's down there,” the healer said, his voice sinking in despair. "The Fon's executioner took great delight in telling me. Diana wouldn't confess to poisoning the old Fon---even when they tortured her.

  They condemned her anyway and threw her down there. My poor Diana." He leaned against Gabria, covered his face with his hands, and wept. "All these years,” Piers cried. "All these years. I never truly believed she was dead . . . until I saw this pit."

  Gabria finally understood. So many things he had said and done fel into place: his flight from Pra Desh, his refusal to talk about his family or his past, his abiding sadness. She knew how he felt. For the healer, looking into the pit must have been like standing on top of a burial mound and saying goodbye to those buried there. She held onto her friend and let him cry.

  "There's nothing down there anymore," she said softly. "Diana is gone."

  He wept until the worst of his grief had waned, then he was quiet for a very long time, his gaze lost in the depths of the pit. Gabria could hear the others moving around and searching the cavern for an exit, but she stayed with Piers while he faced the phantoms of his past.