The Black Road d-2
Page 36
In amazement, Darrick watched as people came forward with wounded friends and family, beseeching him to heal them. He turned to Taramis. "What do I do?"
The sage gazed at him. "The choice is yours. You can board that ship and tend to your own needs as best you can, or you can stay here in this moment and tend the needs of others."
Darrick looked out over the huge crowd. "But there are so many."
Already two dozen litters with men and women lying near death were spread across the docks. People called out to him, begging him to aid their fallen family and comrades.
"But the power I have," Darrick said, "it isn't from the Light."
"No," Taramis agreed. "Listen to me, though. How do you know that in this moment the Light hasn't had a design in placing you exactly in the position you find yourself in now?"
"I'm tainted with the demon."
"You also possess a demon's great power, and you can do a lot of good with it if you choose."
"And what if in using that power I also lose myself?" Darrick asked.
"Life is about balance," Taramis said. "Balance between the Light and the Dark. I would not be able to champion the will of the Light so strongly, so willingly, had I not been exposed to the Darkness that waits to devour us in the Burning Hells. Just as steel must be tempered, Darrick, so must a man. You've come a long way. Your present is balanced between your past and the dreams you might have. You stand between the Light and the Dark as Kabraxis's gateway, but it is your choice to remain open or closed. Your choice to hide the power or to use it. You can fear it or embrace it. Either way, it has already changed your life forever."
Quietly, thoughts racing inside his head, the demon whispering somewhere at the back, Darrick looked at the crowd that waited so expectantly. Then, taking a deep breath, he went forward to meet his future, his head high, no one's unloved bastard child anymore but a man of compassion and conviction. He went to the wounded and the dying, and he healed them, listening to the demon scream at the back of his mind.
"IT'S THE DEMON'S DOING,"
PALAT SNARLED.
"The demon knows we're down here."
In the next instant, a frightening figure surged from beneath the water. Formed of the rats' bones, the creature stood eight feet tall, built square and broad-chested as an ape. It stood on bowed legs that were whitely visible through the murky water. Instead of two arms, the bone creature possessed four, all longer than the legs. When it closed its hands, horns formed of ribs and rats' teeth stuck out of the creature's fists, rendering them into morningstars for all intents and purposes. The horns looked sharp-edged, constructed for slashing as well as stabbing. Small bones, some of them jagged pieces of bone, formed the demon's face the creature wore.
"That's a bone golem," Taramis said. "Your weapons won't do it much harm."
The bone golem's mouth, created by splintered bones so tightly interwoven they gave the semblance of mobility, grinned, then opened as the creature spoke in a harsh howl that sounded like a midnight wind tearing through a graveyard. "Come to your deaths, fools."
FB2 document info
Document ID: 023a39df-f9d1-401e-b05b-7ef9a6e5d627
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 06.04.2009
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