Reavers of the Blood Sea

by Richard Knaak

  Lord Broedius did not remain in the rear of the battle, instead charging in again and again to repel advancing reavers. He forced himself to stay back only when necessary. The knight commander even dragged the wounded behind the lines when able, something his personal guard could not argue him out of doing.

  Whatever their differences, the minotaurs of the empire fought alongside the Kazelati as if all had been trained in the same unit. The slimmer, quicker Kazelati often thrust ahead, relying on the solid lines of their cousins to protect them when they stepped back. The axes of the empire cleaved with deadly effect, leaving a pile of Magori dead in their wake. So great were the underdwellers’ numbers, though, that still the minotaurs would face defeat and death. Yet all they and their human allies could do was fight and hope, and all Aryx could do from his present vantage point was pray.

  “So fortunate they will be,” the Coil crooned. “See? Another receives the Father of All and of Nothing’s gift! Soon, so very soon …”

  Caught up in the struggle, the servant of Chaos virtually ignored his two prisoners now … and why not? Neither Aryx nor Delara could free themselves from it. Aryx could move one hand well enough, but without any weapon, it did him no good whatsoever. Besides, he doubted that any weapon other than the Sword of Tears would have done much good against such a leviathan, and even it had proven wanting thus far.

  Thinking of the enchanted artifact, he carefully twisted his head so that he could see it. The Sword of Tears lay where it had fallen, the stone in the hilt giving no sign of life.

  Even as Aryx thought that, the stone suddenly flashed brightly. The flash lasted but a moment and went unnoticed by the Coil, but the minotaur felt certain that he had not imagined it. He peered at it with the dragon orb, trying to focus on the gem.

  Another flash of green greeted his gaze.

  The sword had come to him once before when he had been near the docks. It had come to him, but Aryx had used it only by reflex. He had never dared let it control his actions to the extent that it desired.

  At that moment, the Sword of Tears broke its long silence, reaching in to his thoughts. Master …

  Aryx almost spoke out loud, so surprised was he to hear the demon blade again.

  Will you give yourself to me?

  He stared at the cursed blade, which the minotaur felt certain even now sought only its own gain. Aryx glared at the sword, letting it decipher his response.

  Will you give yourself for Sargonnas?

  For the God of Vengeance? For the god who had abandoned his children? True, Sargonnas had power that might destroy the Coil, but Aryx hesitated to agree to something he did not understand, especially concerning a god and a sword with questionable definitions of honor.

  Yet if Sargonnas could defeat the hellish leviathan, it might save all the others, including those friends and family he had aboard the fleet.

  “The Vengeance is breaking away!” Delara shouted, interrupting his desperate thoughts.

  Aryx looked and saw that the image of the great flagship filled the sphere. The Vengeance had broken off the rocks, and as it slipped back out to sea, it tipped to one side. To the minotaur’s horror, he saw that there were still a few aboard her.

  The Vengeance. She had unnerved him when he had seen first her in the fog, and then even more so when Aryx had awakened to find himself aboard. To see her now, though, shook the minotaur. The waves pushed the once great ship around, smashing the bottom of her hull against the rocks again. The wood gave way, allowing the sea to rush in even faster.

  The Vengeance began to sink.

  So it will go, interjected the sword in his head, unless we act now. Will you give yourself?

  Aryx had no desire to feel the sorcerous tentacles of the demon blade invading his mind again, but he nonetheless nodded.

  The Sword of Tears suddenly darted toward his free hand.

  He gripped it tightly, but when the sword tried to control him, Aryx fought against it. If he died here, he would die his own warrior, not the puppet of this parasitic weapon.

  Fool … fool of a master!

  The minotaur paid its cries no mind, already acting. He brought the edge of the blade up against the segments imprisoning him, trusting to the magical edge. The Sword of Tears sliced into the thick coils, and as the Chaos creature howled in shock and pain, Aryx freed himself, then darted toward Delara.

  Once more he brought the blade down, and once more it cut through his monstrous foe with little difficulty. However, the sword no longer wailed, a curious but, to Aryx, unimportant thing. He cared only that it would continue to cut so long as he struck.

  Looping coils shot forth from every direction. They ranged in size from as slim as Aryx’s arm to diameters twice, three times his height and more. Aryx thrust with the Sword of Tears and watched with some satisfaction as it bit into the serpentine body. Again energy flashed and the attacking segment withdrew.

  Delara, unfortunately, had no weapon save a jagged piece of rock with which to defend herself, and therefore her few strikes made little impression on the attacking monster. Only Aryx saved her from being snared and pulled away. However, he couldn’t watch so many sides for long. If they didn’t come up with something quickly, the Coil would eventually take them again, no doubt fulfilling its earlier threats to the letter.

  “That sword had a reason to come here,” Delara muttered. “Surely it couldn’t have been this!”

  Aryx nodded, unwilling to spare his breath for anything else at the moment. The enchanted blade had sent them into this place, but what it had in mind, he could not say.

  Give in to me! it demanded.

  “Never!” the gray minotaur whispered, fighting back the darkness that had begun to creep inside his head.

  “You see?” the Coil mocked. “Even with your lives so threatened, no Sargonnas comes to save you! The Coil watches in all directions! The betrayer of Father Chaos has betrayed you in turn … and so the least this loyal and most noble servant can do is crush your miserable little existences from the memory of this ball of mud!”

  A segment shot forward, crashing into Delara, who in turn crashed into Aryx’s back. They tumbled backward, Aryx managing to right himself just in time to defend them as another, larger segment looped toward the hapless pair.

  On a hunch, Aryx used his draconian eye to study the oncoming trunk. Immediately his sharper vision detected a weak spot in the piece, perhaps where Delara had earlier scored a slight hit. Without hesitation, the minotaur swung the deadly blade, aiming for that exact location.

  The Sword of Tears tore into the side of the Coil, burying itself so quickly that Aryx feared for a moment that he would be unable to pull the axe free. Raw energy exploded from the wound, sending the minotaur back a pace. At the same time, a shiver ran along every visible segment of the Chaos monstrosity. Before the wounded trunk could withdraw, Aryx again plunged his blade into the gaping wound, cutting away at the interior of his gargantuan adversary. More of the thick, putrid fluid poured forth, raising a stench even stronger than that which the Magori exuded.

  At last the Coil managed to retract the badly wounded piece. Rage filled every word. “Little mite that bites! Little parasite that thinks itself worthy! This most loyal servant will crush you as it crushed your feeble guardian in his temple!”

  Segments of the leviathan rolled at them from every side. Aryx tried to fend them off, but there were too many. It seemed impossible that they might survive. Aryx managed a lucky strike, but the Coil moved with much more caution now, evading his reach. Aryx began to feel helpless.

  Once more the Sword of Tears derided him. Mortal fool! Bull-headed bull … you would sacrifice the world instead of yourself?

  “All right!” Aryx muttered. “I’ll give in, but you’ve got to protect Delara! She has no weapon!”

  “What’s that?” Delara asked, overhearing part of his reply. “What are you talking about?”

  What is one female to countless lives?

  “Yo
u heard me! Protect her!”

  I can promise nothing, Master.…

  The sword had him. Even he could not expect it to truly keep Delara from harm. “Do what you can.”

  I can do nothing until you do.…

  Aryx nodded. Steeling himself, he opened up his mind, his thoughts, to the demon blade.

  With what felt like triumphant glee, the malevolent entity of the sword filled him, seized control of his body. Aryx watched as his arm moved in incredible patterns, slicing at the Coil relentlessly. Under the sudden shift, the nearest segments retreated several feet.

  To the minotaur’s surprise, though, the Sword of Tears did not try to lead them to safety. Instead, it pulled Aryx forward regardless of any desire on his part to avoid that direction. The towering sphere of white fire filled his gaze, the images within indistinct for the moment, although Aryx thought he saw Carnelia trying to drag a weakened Rand to safety. Then all concern for those battling the Magori vanished as the demon blade positioned him for a thrust … directly into the sphere!

  “What are you doing?” Delara asked him.

  Aryx would have asked the same question, but the sword answered first. Saving his chosen …

  What it meant, he had no time to decipher, for already the Sword of Tears thrust toward the fiery sphere, and Aryx could only shut his eyes and hope that he died swiftly.

  The enchanted blade wailed loud and long as it pierced the Coil’s fearsome toy. Aryx felt the hair on his body stand on end. He opened his eyes and watched as the energy from the sphere flowed from it into the tip of the sword. In reality, it took no more than the blink of an eye for the sword to devour the entire globe, yet to the warrior, it seemed forever.

  Then, as the Coil’s segments surrounded him, snared Delara again, and squeezed tight, the Sword of Tears twisted downward, driving itself into the ground.

  Aryx’s world exploded. The earth shook, the ceiling of the cavern fell in, and the servant of Chaos roared, not in agony but in what seemed extreme surprise and … and a little fear. The force threw Aryx away from where the sphere had stood, sending him crashing against the rocks. His grip on the Sword of Tears, or perhaps its grip on him, failed, and the weapon rattled to the ground a few feet away.

  The battered warrior struggled to rise, knowing his only hope lay in the treacherous blade. However, as he tried to reach for the hilt with fingers so stiff that they could barely even close, another hand clad in an ebony and crimson gauntlet took up the Sword of Tears. Aryx forced his neck to turn so that he could see who had stolen from him his one chance to save not only Delara but everyone else.

  From head to toe, he wore ebony armor edged in crimson. Although human in general form, he stood taller than any minotaur, even the Kazelati. This ominous knight Aryx had seen but one time before, when he had been granted the infernal vision of the gods of Krynn battling against the ferocious mad giant who could only be the Father of All and of Nothing. This knight had stood fighting against Father Chaos regardless of the consequences, and even without the great stylized bird of prey upon the breastplate or the massive horned helmet, Aryx would have recognized him immediately.

  “Sargonnas …”

  The Final Sacrifice

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Sargonnas …” Aryx repeated, still not quite believing that the figure before him could be real. He had been so certain the god had abandoned all of them.

  Even though the name was little more than a whisper, the dark knight glanced at him. “Aryximaraki. A brave warrior of the empire you are, mortal. Would that you had been one of mine from the beginning.” The Sword of Tears blazed again, now that its master wielded it. “My sorrow over the losses you have faced. They could not be helped.”

  Aryx managed to rise to his knees, once more furious at having been used by the god. “Damn you, Sargonnas! Where were you? Where were you when your people were being slaughtered again?”

  “Planning. Plotting. Letting this wyrm think what it would so that it might leave itself open.” Sargonnas surveyed the entire region, staring at the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of writhing segments. “Ensuring the ultimate survival of my children, my chosen.” He held up the Sword of Tears so that Aryx could see the sinister green stone. “Physically, I have been with you whenever you held this treacherous servant of mine, this blade that would be a god.…”

  I sought to obey, Master! I sought to obey! Never would I betray you!

  Aryx thought that only he could hear the frantic, almost whining, voice, but Sargonnas replied, “You sought to obey and still hold me within, eh? Obey and gain all for yourself, as if such a thing could come to pass?”

  Never, Master! Never! See? I even sought to destroy your foe! I could not release you because I lacked the power! The servants of Chaos I cannot feed from, only this sphere of magic!

  “No … they are an unappetizing lot, are they not? Especially their puppet master.”

  At this, the walls around them suddenly resounded with the Coil’s long, mocking laughter. “The betrayer shows his craven little face at last,” it crowed, “and thinks that he will go unpunished! Such a fool, such a fool! The Father of All and of Nothing will greatly reward his most loyal servant when you are removed from the game and your little playthings have been eradicated, Sargonnas!”

  The Horned One looked unaffected by the threat. “The only thing to be removed is you and yours, wyrm. The trap you hoped to spring has been sprung on you instead … and now you shall know why I am the God of Vengeance.”

  Sargonnas raised both hands high, the Sword of Tears aglow in the left. A crimson aura formed around him, an aura from which there suddenly radiated a burst of magical force. Curiously, it completely bypassed the minotaurs, but whenever it touched some segment of the Coil, the aura crackled and that segment shimmered and writhed. Sargonnas clenched his fist, and the magical force radiating from him intensified, illuminating the entire area.

  However, the Chaos creature did not stand idly by as the Horned One attacked. First it moved—moved everywhere—shaking what remained of the cavern apart and sending a hailstorm of rock plummeting down. Every one of the huge green-gold segments stirred, twisting and winding through stone and earth. Yet only the tiniest of the rocks struck Aryx and Delara. The rest were deflected off them as if they wore some invisible magical armor. Tons of earth fell all around them, and still Sargonnas protected the pair, although it seemed harder as time passed. Despite the dark deity’s timely intervention, however, Aryx felt little gratitude. He felt that Sargonnas had saved them only because it had been convenient to do so.

  His initial attack over, the God of Vengeance used the demon blade to slice a great arc through the air, the Sword of Tears wailing all the while. Where the blade struck, a glittering, razor-sharp curve of metal formed, a curve of metal that flew about the valley, cutting at the many parts of the Coil. Some it damaged, sending bursts of energy shooting from the wounds, but others it could not even scratch. The blade flew above, under, and at the various components of the behemoth until at last one segment crushed the flying arc beneath its weight.

  Then the Coil countered in earnest. From every angle, massive looped segments shot out, focused on Sargonnas. With the demon blade, the god slashed again and again, sometimes scoring, sometimes missing. Yet at last his defenses wavered, for one of the great serpentine trunks battered him from the side, sending the dark deity flying. Another segment caught him before he hit the ground, tossing Sargonnas high into the air again. However, the Horned One did not plummet earthward, but rather righted in the sky, floating well above his monstrous adversary.

  Aryx tore his gaze from the combatants, Delara now his only concern. “We’ve got to get away while we can!”

  She looked stunned. “But we cannot leave him now!”

  “What do you hope to do? We’ve no weapons! Sargonnas intended this final struggle, Delara! Our parts are over!”

  At last she nodded. Had he been on his own, Aryx suspected that he would h
ave stayed and tried to help the god, but Delara would leave only if he did. After Seph, he didn’t want to lose Delara.

  They tried to make their way to the tunnel through which Aryx had originally arrived. The Coil and Sargonnas appeared not to notice them, caught up in their duel. The earth shook, causing the two minotaurs to stumble. Some light shone into the cavern, but it in no way encouraged Aryx, for the walls were still too high and steep for them to climb. The tunnel remained the only way out.

  “Not much farther!” he called to Delara. Once they escaped the ruined cavern, things would be better.

  “I just hope we can—Aryx! Look out!”

  She pushed him forward just as a rockfall started. Aryx rolled over and tried to stand, but some of the collapsing rock struck him, sending the minotaur reeling backward. He grunted as every bone in his body shook. Briefly he glimpsed Delara pressing herself against the wall. Then dust and more rubble obscured everything.

  One of the mammoth segments of the Coil slid past, pushing Aryx into the very tunnel mouth he and Delara had been trying to reach. He kicked at the thick, scaled hide, but the minotaur might as well have been striking the rock face next to him. Unable to enter the shattered cavern until the Coil had passed by, Aryx waited in frustration as the gargantuan trunk slowly moved on.

  “Delara!” He did not care if the Coil took notice of him. It only mattered that he reach her and make certain that she had escaped the avalanche.

  She lay near where Aryx had last seen her, her body half-buried by rock. At first Aryx thought that she stirred in response to his voice, but then he realized that her body only shifted because of the Coil’s earthshaking movements. He stumbled his way toward her, fearful of what he might find but unwilling to give up hope.

  “Delara …” He called her name again, but she made no response. Aryx hoped that she was only unconscious, yet from this close, he could make out blood on her shoulder and head. Delara faced away from him, preventing Aryx from knowing for certain her fate.