by Mel Odom
Desperately, Darrick threw himself backward. The razor edges of the fist slashed across his chest again, cutting through his traveling leathers but scoring on the flesh beneath this time as well. Fear rattled through Darrick, almost causing him to give up hope, but Hauklin’s sword felt steady and true in his hands. He parried the bone golem’s next blow, turning the huge fist from its target, stepping back as the creature followed the bony hammer into the water and bent double. Spinning, Darrick landed a blow against the bone golem’s ribcage beneath the stub of its bottom left arm. Broken bone shards flew in all directions, but the creature remained whole.
Still moving, somehow keeping his footing in the water and in the muck, Darrick retreated, slashing and parrying with Hauklin’s sword. Crimson stained the front of his traveling leathers as he bled. While pulling back, he tripped and fell.
The bone golem swiped at Darrick at once, aiming a fist at his face.
Then Rhambal was there, blocking the blow with his shield. The razor-sharp spikes that festooned the bone golem’s fist tore through the warrior’s shield less than a foot from Darrick’s face. Getting his feet under him again, Darrick saw the bone golem’s spike pierce Rhambal’s shield and into the arm that held it. Blood spurted as the bone golem drew its fist free.
In obvious agony, Rhambal stepped back, then faltered and fell to his knees, clutching his wounded arm to his chest and leaving his head exposed.
Guilt hammered Darrick, more painful than the cuts across his chest. It’s my fault, he told himself. If I hadn’t been able to free Hauklin’s sword, they would have never come here.
No, Mat said. They would have come, Darrick. Even without ye an’ that sword. It’s the demon working inside ye. It’s puttin’ them thoughts there. Fillin’ ye with bad thoughts an’ makin’ ye weak. Ye can make a difference in this, an’ that’s what I come back for. Now move!
The bone golem wasted no time in setting itself and attacking the new prey it found before it. Gripping the enchanted sword in both hands, Darrick stepped forward and swung. When the blade met the bone golem’s arm, the weapon shattered the limb.
Roaring with rage, the bone golem turned its attention back to Darrick, flailing after him with its two remaining arms. Darrick fended one of the blows off, then avoided the other, throwing himself into the air and flipping over the arm.
Taramis and Palat dashed forward, caught Rhambal under the arms, and dragged him back from the bone golem’s reach.
Landing on his feet, Darrick blocked another sweeping roundhouse blow, feeling the impact vibrate through his wrists and arms. He almost lost his grip on the sword but clung to it tightly. Running at the wall on the left, knowing if he stopped the bone golem would swarm over him, Darrick threw himself into the air and struck the wall with his water-filled boots. Water splashed out of his boots on impact.
You’re a blight on me, boy, his father’s voice thundered inside his head. An embarrassment to me. By the Light, I hate the sight of your ugly face. It ain’t no face that ever belonged to me. And that red hair of yours, you’ll never find it in my family. Nor in your ma’s, I’ll warrant.
The words tumbled through Darrick’s mind, splitting his concentration as he cushioned the impact against the wall by bending his knees and falling forward.
Don’t listen to him, Mat said. It’s only the damned demon talkin’ to ye. He’s lookin’ for yer weak spots, he is. An’ yer personal business, why, it’s no business of his.
But Darrick knew that the words didn’t just come from the demon. They came from that small stable in back of his father’s butcher shop, and they came from years of abuse and cold hatred that he hadn’t understood as a child. Even as a young man, Darrick had been powerless to defend himself against his father’s harsh words. Maybe his father had learned not to be so quick with his hands when Darrick had started fighting back, but Darrick had never learned to protect himself from his father’s verbal assaults and his mother’s neglect.
Darrick fell forward on the wall, his forward momentum allowing him to make contact for just an instant before gravity pulled him toward the water-filled tunnel. From the corner of his eye, he saw the bone golem throwing another punch. By the time it reached the wall where he’d landed, he had pushed off with one hand—the other gripping Hauklin’s sword—and flipped back toward the tunnel behind his attacker.
The bone golem’s fist crunched into the wall, splitting stone and breaking loose mortar that held it together.
Darrick forced his father’s words from his mind, stilled his shaking hand, and squared himself as he took a full breath of the fetid air around him. Taking a two-handed grip on the magical blade, watching the bone golem start turning to face him, Darrick saw Taramis and his warriors on the other side of the creature. Beyond them, the church guards awaited an opportunity. Crossbowman fired their weapons, but the quarrels caught on the shields of the men at the rear of the warrior group.
Do it! Mat roared in Darrick’s head.
The sword blazed blue again, a true and cold blue like that found in the sea before the deep turned black. Swinging, not holding anything back, Darrick felt the enchanted weapon shatter through the bone golem’s ribcage and grate to a stop embedded in the creature’s spine.
The bone golem howled with pain, but its macabre voice carried laughter as well, rolling gales of it. “Now you’re going to die, insect.”
“No,” Darrick said, feeling the power tingling through the sword. “Go back to hell, demon.”
Eldritch blue flames leapt down the length of the sword and curled around the bone golem’s spine as it reached for Darrick. The fire grew, enveloping the bone golem and burning away whatever magic bound the skeletal remains of the dead rats together. Flaming bones toppled into the sewer water, hissing when they struck.
For a moment, everyone—including Darrick—stood frozen in disbelief.
Run! Mat yelled.
Turning, Darrick ran, raising his knees high to clear the water level. The sword continued to glow, chasing back the shadows that filled the tunnel. Taramis and the demon hunters came after Darrick.
Less than fifty yards farther on, the tunnel ended at a T juncture. Without hesitation, the sword pulled Darrick to the right. He ran on, filmed by the condensation filling the tunnel as well as perspiration pouring from every pore. His breath burned the back of his throat, and he was convinced the stench of the place was soaking into him.
Only a short distance farther on, the tunnel ended without warning. Sometime in distant years past, the sewer had collapsed. The sword’s bright blade illuminated the pile of rubble that blocked the passageway. Cloaked in the shadows and the collapse of broken rock, rats prowled the rubbish heap. Hundreds of them scampered and crept along the broken rock.
Above the rubble, a rounded dome of fallen earth peeked through. No longer shored up by the stones, the earth had collapsed inward over the years but had not completely fallen. There was no way to guess how many feet of earth and rock separated the tunnel from the surface.
“Dead end,” Palat growled. “That damned sword has played us false this time, Taramis. Those guards will be down on us in another moment, and there’s no place for us to run.”
Taramis turned to Darrick. “What is the meaning of this?”
“I don’t know,” Darrick admitted.
TWENTY-FOUR
In the distance, the splash of the closing guards running through the sewer grew steadily louder in Darrick’s ears. At least in this part of the tunnel, the water level was a few inches below knee-high, and the current was weak, little more than a steady flow. Darrick felt betrayed. The voice that he’d thought had been Mat’s had only been another demon-spawned trick. Staring at the sword, he knew it had been bait for an insidious trap.
No, Mat said. This is where ye’re supposed to be. Just hold yer water, I say, an’ things will be revealed to ye.
“What things?” Darrick demanded.
Taramis and the other warriors turned to watch him
, and the splashing of the approaching church guards grew louder, more immediate.
There were three of us in that cavern when Kabraxis stepped through into our world, Mat answered. The magicks that Buyard Cholik unleashed when he opened that gateway to the Burning Hells marked all of us. Them doubts in yer head, Darrick, that’s just Kabraxis playing on yer fears. Just hold the course.
“Three?” Darrick repeated. “There weren’t three of us.” Unless Buyard Cholik was being counted.
There was another, Mat insisted. We all lost somethin’ that night, Darrick, an’ now we must stand together to get it back. Demons never enter this world without sowing the seeds of their own destruction. It’s up to men to figure out what they are. Me? I been lost for a long time, an’ it wasn’t until ye found Hauklin’s sword that I come back to meself and ye.
Darrick shook his head, doubting all of it.
You’re worthless, boy, his father’s voice said. Hardly worth the time to kill you. Maybe I’ll just wait until you get a little bigger, put a little more meat on your bones, then I’ll dress you out and tell everybody you up and ran away.
The old fear vibrated through Darrick. In the shadows he thought he could almost see his father’s face.
“Darrick,” Taramis called.
Even though he heard the man clearly, Darrick found he couldn’t respond. He was trapped by the memory and by the old fear. The stink of the stables behind the butcher’s shop filled his nostrils, making the images of the men before him and the sewer tunnel around him seem dreamlike.
C’mon, Darrick! Mat called. Pay attention, damn ye! This is the hold that Kabraxis has found over ye. Me, why, that foul demon up an’ lost me out in the ghost ways, an’ maybe I’d be there still if ye hadn’t found Hauklin’s blade the way ye done.
Darrick felt the sword in his fist, but he blamed it for leading them into the dead end. Maybe Mat still believed the sword was a talisman of power, something to stand tall against the demons, but Darrick didn’t. It was a cursed thing, like other weapons he’d talked about. Palat had owned a cursed weapon; he knew what he was talking about when he denounced Hauklin’s sword.
It’s the demon, Darrick, Mat said. Be strong.
“I can’t,” Darrick whispered hollowly. He watched the torchlights of the approaching guards gather at the far end of the tunnel.
“You can’t what?” Taramis asked him.
“I can’t believe,” Darrick said. All his life he’d trained himself not to believe. He didn’t believe that his father had hated him. He didn’t believe that it was his father’s fault that he was beaten. He’d trained himself to believe that life was one day after another at the butcher’s shop and that a good day was one when a beating didn’t cripple him up.
But ye escaped that, Mat said.
“I ran,” Darrick whispered, “but I couldn’t outrun what was meant to be.”
Ye have.
“No,” Darrick said, gazing at the guard.
“They’re waiting,” Palat said. “They figure there’s too many of us for them to take without losing more than a few of their own. They’re going to hold up, get more archers in here, then take us down.”
Taramis stepped toward Darrick. “Are you all right?”
Darrick didn’t answer. Helplessness filled him, and he struggled to push it away. The feeling settled over his chest and shoulders, making it hard for him to breathe. For this past year, he’d put his life into a bottle, into the bottom of a glass, into the cheap wine in every lowdown tavern he’d wandered through. Then he’d made the mistake of trying to sober himself up and believe there was more than futility in his life.
More than the bad luck and the feeling of being unwanted that had haunted him all his life.
Worthless, his father’s voice spat.
And why had he saved himself? To die at the end of a collapsed sewer like a rat? Darrick wanted to laugh, but he wanted to cry as well.
Darrick, Mat called.
“No, Mat,” Darrick said. “I’ve come far enough. It’s time to end it.”
Moving closer, holding the lantern he held up to Darrick’s face, Taramis stared into his eyes. “Darrick.”
“We’ve come here to die,” Darrick said, telling Mat as well as Taramis.
“We didn’t come here to die,” Taramis said. “We’ve come here to expose the demon for what he is. Once the people here who worship him know what he is, they will turn from him and be free.”
The malaise that possessed Darrick was so strong that the sage’s words barely registered on him.
It’s the demon, Mat said.
“Are you talking to your friend?” Taramis asked.
“Mat’s dead,” Darrick said in a hoarse whisper. “I saw him die. I got him killed.”
“Is he here with us?” Taramis asked.
Darrick shook his head, but the movement felt distant from him, as if it were someone else’s body. “No. He’s dead.”
“But he’s talking to you,” the sage said.
“It’s a lie,” Darrick answered.
It’s not a lie, ye bloody great fool! Mat exploded. Damn ye, ye thick-headed mullet. Ye was always the hardest to convince of somethin’ ye couldn’t see, couldn’t touch for yerself. But if ye don’t listen to me now, Darrick Lang, I’m gonna be travelin’ the ghost ways forever. I’ll never know no rest, never be at peace. Would ye wish that on me?
“No,” Darrick said.
“What is he saying?” Taramis asked. “Have we come to the right place?”
“It’s a trick,” Darrick said. “Mat says that the demon is in my head, trying to weaken me. And he’s telling me he’s not the demon.”
“Do you believe him?” Taramis asked.
“I believe the demon is in my head,” Darrick said. “I’ve somehow betrayed you all, Taramis. I apologize.”
“No,” Taramis said. “The sword is true. It came to you.”
“It was a demon’s trick.”
The sage shook his head. “No demon, not even Kabraxis, could have power over Hauklin’s sword.”
But Darrick remembered how the sword had resisted him, how it hadn’t come free at first down in that hidden tomb.
The sword couldn’t be freed at first, Mat said. It couldn’t. It had to wait on me. It took us both, ye see. That’s why I was wanderin’ the ghost ways, stuck between hither an’ thither. That’s me part of this. An’ the third man, why, he’s yer way out, he is.
“The third man is the way out,” Darrick repeated dully.
Taramis studied him, moving the lantern in front of Darrick’s eyes.
Despite the irritation he felt at having the light so close to his eyes, Darrick found that he couldn’t move.
You ain’t my son, his father roared in his mind. Folks look at you, and they wouldn’t blame me if I killed your mother. But she’s bewitched me. I can’t even raise a hand to her.
Pain exploded along Darrick’s cheek, but it was pain from the memory, not something that was happening at present. The boy he’d been had landed in a heap on a pile of dung-covered straw. And his father had closed in and beaten him, causing Darrick to spend days lying in the stable with fever and a broken arm.
“Why didn’t I die then?” Darrick asked. Everything would have been so much easier, so much simpler.
Mat would still have been alive, still living in Hillsfar with his family.
I chose not to be there, Mat said. I chose to go with me friend. An’ if ye hadn’t given me reason to get out of Hillsfar, I’d have gotten out of there on me own. Hillsfar wasn’t that big a place for the likes of ye and me. Me da knew that, just like he knew about me leavin’ for ye.
“I killed you,” Darrick said.
An’ if it wasn’t for ye, how many times over dead would I have been by now? Before we ended up at Tauruk’s Port?
In his mind, Darrick saw Mat slam into the cliff wall again, the skeleton hanging to him like a leech.
How many times did them captains we crewed with
tell us that the life of a Westmarch Navy sailor wasn’t worth havin’? Long hours, short pay, an’ an even shorter life was it come to that, as it most likely would. The only things what made it all worthwhile was yer shipmates an’ what few tavern wenches would roll their eyes at ye like ye was some kind of big damn hero.
Darrick remembered those speeches and those times. Mat had always made the best of it, always got the prettiest wenches, always had the most friends.
An’ I’d be knowin’ if me luck holds true in the hereafter, Mat said, were I ever to get finished with this last bit of business we signed on for. Take up the sword, Darrick, an’ stand ready. The third man is comin’.
Part of the malaise lifted from Darrick. Only then did he realize that Taramis had gripped the front of his shirt in both fists and was shaking him.
“Darrick,” the sage said. “Darrick.”
“I hear you.” Darrick heard the thunk of quarrels meeting the metal shields that the other warriors held up as well. Evidently the church guards had grown braver and decided to pick some of them off if they could. At the moment, the warriors were able to keep the shields overlapping so that none of the fletched missiles got through.
“What third man?” Taramis demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“Is there a way out of this?”
“I don’t know.”
Desperation creased the sage’s face. “Use the sword.”
“I don’t know how.”
Ye’re waitin’, Mat said.
“We’re waiting,” Darrick repeated dully. He’d dwindled so close inside himself that nothing mattered. His father’s voice was muted, somewhere in the background. Maybe Mat had found a way to keep it quiet, but if he believed that, then Mat couldn’t be the demon, and Darrick was pretty certain that the demon inside his head was Mat, too.
“There’s other guards coming,” Palat announced.
Without warning, stone shifted against stone.
Taramis glanced over Darrick’s shoulder. “Look,” the sage said. “Perhaps your friend was right.”
