Mark growled at the Websworn. “Leave her alone.”
The frail old archon pushed his way through a wall of black cloth. He leaned over, studying Mark’s face and chewing his saliva like a man-cow. “That was quite impressive. I knew that the blasphemous Warren possessed the gift of magic, but I’ve never seen anybody so skilled with the obscene arts.” He giggled an effeminate note. “But now it seems your heretical god has abandoned you.” His hand slithered to his belt and withdrew a crude carving knife. “Now. You will tell us where the children of the spider are.”
His words were hard to hear beneath the ringing. Mark’s head lolled, neck going limp. At some unspoken cue, the robes restraining his arms wrenched his shoulders back and dragged him to his knees.
The archon, a sickly smile growing from his receded gums, drew nearer. A bony hand reached out and took Mark by the jaw, forcing him to turn face to face with the elder. The pungent stench of rotting teeth broke against him. The old man laid the edge of his knife against Mark’s neck—right against his carotid artery. Each beat of his heart caused the blade to press just a little into the skin. “Now, will you cooperate, or must I force you and the girl?”
Mark couldn’t speak. He took shallow breaths, trying to beat back the throbbing pain behind his eyes.
The archon smiled. His fingers shifted along the hilt of the knife, and then spun it about. Drawing a step away, he extended his free arm and drove the blade of the knife into his own flesh. Mark watched in confusion and disgust. The man exposed his teeth in a half-grimace, a sigh of ecstasy passing through the mass grave of his teeth. From the mouth of the wound, a trickle of blood emerged. Then, a small black mass slipped up onto the knife, followed by another and then one more. Mark’s stomach wove itself into knots as he saw the legs carrying the bulbous protospiders onto the blade.
With a shout of pleasure and a wet thunk, the archon ripped the knife from his arm and sighed. Blood splattered against the floor. Creeping closer once more, the archon held the blade close to Mark’s neck again, giving him an intimate view of the parasitic creatures. Round, segmented bodies. Thin, spindly legs arranged radially. The head was stubby, ending with a flat ring covered in tiny, inward-facing hooks.
“Last chance, Warren. Is this truly where you wish your consciousness to end?”
He tightened his jaw, his forehead and temples shaking in pain. The archon’s green eyes glistened with madness inches from Mark’s own. A spark of hope blossomed into a spell; Mark’s eyes filled with power. “I pose that same question to you.”
It all went green.
Mark’s perception plunged into the archon’s irises. Branching trees of memories and thoughts filled his mind. For a moment, the pain ravaging Mark’s skull vanished; all he felt was the electrical tingle of knowledge flowing into him as he pulled at every loose synapse, and the distant biting of the spider-things that colonized the man’s brain.
Mark saw memories of Johnathan Griffith, a skeletal little man who could have passed as an emaciated Websworn himself. He saw the attendants of the cult, eager vassals to the Helixweaver. The archons—the six of the most devout—who remained loyal even as their dogma fissioned and tensions rose.
He saw the old man on the night of the purge, being led down the mine shafts toward Ur’thenoth. The laughing face of Griffith as the door closed behind them, sealing them within the spider kingdom. The sting of betrayal, the dawn of a new era of desperate survival, the rediscovery of ancient undergardens that once sustained the troglodytes in aeons past. The fear, the solitude, the endless searches for freedom from their prison.
There, that thread. Pull that thought; follow its path. The search for freedom, the yearning for escape. There. It should have been there, weaving through that desire; the possibility, the option—even a consideration—of opening the portal to the Web and leading the Websworn to the promised land. But those thoughts of the Web and freedom swam with a distant longing, like a dream seen through a smokescreen. And then, from the chain of tangential memories spawned by that longing, emerged the image of a yellow robe retreating through the portal. The Helixweaver, now gone. Through the spell’s eclipsing vision, a hollow dread began to grow.
Mark’s search expanded, quickening. Panic quivered in his gut. Where is it? Visions grew disconnected. Knowledge of Repton and Griffith, of the rituals and ceremonies, seances with the King, and the iconoclasm that rent the order asunder. Any thought—any at all which may have led to the archon’s arcane secret. But each neuron road, each chain of memory was a dead end. There was no sign of the spell’s method of incantation—indeed, no hint of any magical ability whatsoever.
He released the spell, and the vignette of memory vanished, melting back into the walls of cultists. The archon recoiled, his own hand clasping his forehead. The bloody, protospider-covered knife clattered to the floor, sending the bulbous creatures skittering for cover in the gaps between the broken tiles.
The archon hissed. “What did you do!?”
Mark said nothing; he just gritted his teeth to hold back the stream of expletives that boiled in his throat. The will to fight drained from his whole body. The archons never had the ability to open the portal. In the end, the Vant’therax were right; it had been no more than a chance. Despair weighed on his heart. The Helixweaver. The Helixweaver was the only one who could invoke the spell, and now he was gone. Even if he had the strength to fight back the hordes of robes, there was nobody left who could open the portal. It was hopeless. He’d gambled and lost. He hung his head; it was too heavy to support any longer.
The archon, groaning, knelt back down before him. He groped for the handle of his blade and then once more dipped its edge into the dark blood streaming from his opened arm. When he brought it out, another pair of bulbous spider-things scuttled along its length. With a sadistic hiss, he lowered the blade to Mark’s eye level, showing him the mind parasites. “I am losing patience with you, sorcerer. Tell me what I want to know.”
Lethargically, Mark jerked his head toward where Annika stood below. “Let her go. And I’ll cooperate. I’ll tell you everything I know.” This was the only way. At the very least, he could save Annika’s life. He’d play into their hands just long enough to destroy them. If he could. And if he couldn’t, then they would learn nothing from their infestation in either case. At the very least, he would buy the Vant’therax time to consider their options and find a new method of attack. As it was, his usefulness extended no further.
“Mark, what are you doing?” Annika shouted.
He ignored her. He just stared as stoically as he could at the cult shaman’s unwavering glare. The old man curled his hand into a shaking fist. “You are in no position.” He made a harsh gesture, and the robes closed in from all sides, daggers at the ready. Their points came down, all taking aim at Mark’s vulnerable core. When the blades stopped, their tips tickled at the nape of his neck like the cold breath of death itself. He could scarcely breathe without sending half a dozen sharpened points into the back of his neck.
Sweat crept down from Mark’s hairline. Rattling pain assaulted him with each heartbeat. Knives at the back and spears at the front. There was no chance of escape. He closed his eyes in a cold acceptance of the end. I’m sorry, Spinny. I’m sorry, Annika, Lily. In the end, I couldn’t do anything. Please forgive me.
“This is your final chance,” the archon said, spitting into Mark’s face with each syllable. “Where are the daughters of the King?”
“Right here!”
Mark started at the sound of the voice, nearly cutting himself upon the readied blades. At once, the archon and the Websworn all retreated a step, searching the room for where the high voice echoed from. Mark’s heart pounded in his stomach. His gaze drifted toward the deep darkness above, where coiled balconies and stairways wound the precipitous heights untold.
“Who’s there?” the archon demanded of the dark above. “Reveal yourself!”
A dull creaking came from high overhead. Then, s
omething moved. Dark orange, the same color as the room’s stonewrought construction. It was a statue, dislodged from its perch, tumbling through the air. A panicked shout went up from the Websworn and robes as they scrambled to get out of the way. The whole structure shook as a statue plummeted into the lower floor, sending a plume of broken tile and dust streaming upward. As Mark recovered from the impact, he caught sight of a thin, silvery line glinting in the torchlight.
“Leave him the hell alone!”
And then she appeared from the shadows of the upper tower. Anterior legs coiled tightly about the strand of web, Kara zipped down from above with a shrill scream on her lips.
The fragile order of the room erupted into utter chaos.
The archon raised a bony finger toward the girl, eyes widening in a frightful expression of glee. “Kill her!”
The plain-clothed thralls that lay near the topped statue rose, some with broken bones protruding from their limbs, and threw themselves toward where the girl would land. Several Websworn charged, brandishing spears. But shadows swirled beneath their feet and rose into yellow blurs. Thralls and tribesmen alike were sent sprawling onto the floor as their formation broke against the wall of Vant’therax.
The knives that had kissed the back of Mark’s neck retreated, their wielders turning and leaping down toward the brewing calamity. As the line of Websworn at the doorway advanced, Annika fell back a step, raised her revolver, and began to fire. Four shots thundered over the cries of the horde, gunning down as many fervent half-men.
Mark scrambled to his feet, a bold laugh slipping from his throat. “Kara!” Dared he to hope? One of the robes behind him attacked, but the knife only clipped his shoulder. He moved with an urgent power that may have flowed from Y’rokkrem itself. He vaulted over the edge of the second level, conjuring a concussive sphere to break his fall, as well as the bones of the Websworn beneath.
Time slowed. The phalanx of one-minded cultists splashed against the Vant’therax, reddening the yellow robes. One of the Websworn slipped past the line, but a single blow from Faul splattered her skull like a watermelon filled with spiders. Yet the tide was too thick, and the human inundation found cracks in the yellow screen. With spears held high, they charged, absorbing shattering blows with a frightening eagerness.
As Kara neared the ground, still screaming in defiance, she leapt off her silken zip-line. She landed, spider legs first, on a spear-wielder’s shoulders. With a shout, she buried her legs in the creature’s face before tearing them out and painting the air with a spray of blood. The Websworn fell, but a small spearhead formation penetrated the Vant’therax’s wall. Kara found her feet and turned toward the oncoming tide. She swung her arm and hurled a brown mass toward the attacking cultists. “Cinnamon! Kill!”
A banshee’s screech answered. The Leng cat attacked, a whirling dervish of legs and gnashing fangs. The line of robes and Websworn recoiled, shouts ringing from the victims of Cinnamon’s lashings. Above them, the archon screamed commands in a nasally creole. Gunshots boomed from the doorway. Bursts of light danced in Annika’s hands, each shot dropping a body in the mob.
Mark surged forward. With another molten spike in his eye, a shockwave sent robes flying and tumbling. He spun about, tracing an arc across the tiled floor with his foot. “Silt, guard her back!” he shouted. The air hissed and seethed, a shimmer distorting the view of the cult. The veilwall hummed, and at once a pair of dark robes vanished into its folds, causing the oncoming wall of cultists to stop dead in its tracks, their faces twisted in awe of the spell.
Mark cringed; he was nearing his absolute limit. He couldn’t push himself much further or he would die.
“Mark!” Kara yelled, tears streaming from her eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m so freaking sorry!” She dropped to her knees in the floor space that was protected from the legion of attackers, and her plated limbs began to slash at the stone. Each movement of her legs was accompanied by a shiver of pain that ran through her appendages. As she finished the sigil’s carving she looked up at him again. “Save Spins! Please!”
He grabbed her hand, cringing as the veilwall swallowed a thrown spear. “I will. And that’s a promise!”
A cold mist began to seep from the design’s glowing edges. The turbid fog swirled into an accretion disc, and a flash of internal light confirmed the portal’s formation.
Mark squeezed her hand tightly and looked her in her liquid blue eyes. “Run. Get out of here. In ten minutes, open it again and let us out.”
She nodded. “I will!”
He took a deep breath and fell forward into the portal, the charred wick of his power blazing with a desperate but rejuvenated hope. Spinny, hang on. Don’t do anything stupid. I’m coming.
As rushing winds and gravity warped his perception, he heard a voice echoing behind and above the roiling white world of fog. It was the voice of Silt, warbling and twisted by the maelstrom. “Faul, stay with Nexara. Protect her with your life. The hour of the Coronation comes. Should we fail, you will be our final chance.”
Then the force of the dimensional penetration ripped his consciousness from him.
Chapter 41
Escape
After navigating back to one of the massive intervening halls and descending an unfamiliar stairway, Spinneretta and Arthr hurtled through another gallery, out a great door, and down a corridor lined with long-dead torches. Half a dozen disconnected flights of stairs had brought them lower, but they were still high above the ground and far from safety. Every so often, Spinneretta would catch the sound of rushing water and an inarticulate roar, but their footsteps echoed and melted together into a swelling rumble that drowned out the mad cackling of the Helixweaver. They dared not look behind them; they knew he was nearing, though they knew not how close he was.
Dammit, Spinneretta thought once she had a handle of her own thoughts. Didn’t expect the venom to wear off so soon. Magic must have enabled him to metabolize the neurotoxin cocktail; there was no other way he could have stood so soon after suffering a bite with that much venom behind it.
Down a set of once-regal stairs they ran. Around the corners of the maze-like halls, their path twisted and turned, but always curved in whatever direction the dim light shone. They took a left. Another loggia, its tall windows nearly blinding. Heart quivering, Spinneretta ventured a quick glance behind. No trace of that demon’s yellow robe, but the distant echo of laughter still pursued.
Another spiral staircase, its steps loose and covered in that damned toxic mold. She clenched her eyes as she flew downward, tears washing away the black and then the white. Another hallway, this one flanked by colonnade windows on either side. She threw a tear-filled look out the left side and was greeted by the sight of foaming surf crashing against the facade of a leaning tower half-sunken in the sea. How ancient must this place have been that the ocean itself had begun to swallow its culture? How many hundreds of years had the kingdom been decaying?
Ahead, through the gaps in the windows on either side, she could make out the imposing shape of a cylindrical bastion of indeterminable height, sliced through the midsection by one of the great ramparts. The stitch in her side grew longer, and a stabbing pain took her breath from her. Keep running. Just keep running. If the Helixweaver was still pursuing them, the sound of his laughter had vanished beneath the crash of waves and the spray of foam.
But when they charged through the doorway leading into the flank tower, Spinneretta’s steps slowed and her breathing grew more desperate. A wide, circular chamber with a domed ceiling forty feet above awaited. High on the walls, once-ornate windows lit the floor. She scanned the curved walls of the perimeter. They were covered in artful mosaics depicting strange beings and stranger cities—but not a door to be found. A goddamn dead end.
Arthr rounded on her in a panic. “Shit, where do we go?”
She sank to one knee, grabbing at the pain in her side. Her lungs were choking for air, her heart racing. “I don’t know.”
Is this i
t? She was exhausted. Every muscle ached, and if she had to run all the way down the window-lined corridor again she would collapse and die, whether or not Nemo was there to intercept them. Perhaps their last chance, she realized as she lurched back to her feet, was to hope and pray he didn’t find them. She spun about, grabbed at the huge stone door left ajar for untold ages, and heaved. The upturned mosaic tiles, resembling cracked mud, crunched and snapped as the great door scraped along the floor and finally slammed closed, blotting out the entrance and rattling the columns with a low rumble.
Arthr took a step back. The meager light from above draped his features in shadow. “Do you think that’ll stop him?”
Helplessness weighed on her heart, and she choked on her own exhalation. “That would take a miracle.” They were trapped. It didn’t matter how far they ran. It didn’t matter how many doors they slammed behind them. In the end, he would find them. All the optimism she’d had was gone; the venom hadn’t been enough. Even in his paralyzed convulsions, the Helixweaver’s strength would have shattered every bone in her body had a single blow connected. It was a nightmare, the realization of the worst-case scenario.
Her mind stuttered and skipped like a warped phonograph. It wasn’t fair. After all she’d given up to end the spider cult, her ultimate goal had been stolen from her. Those sacrifices were in vain. Worse, she’d dragged Arthr to the grave with her because of her selfish nearsightedness. But what could she do? Pain held her hands fixed over the knot in her gut, and her spider legs were half-numb from exertion. Shaking, quivering, her chitin appendages kept trying to curl and rest of their own volition. She was at her physical limit.
Stand up, the voice said. She just shook her head, barely able to think any thoughts of her own. A harsh knock rattled her brain, and the voice came again, angrier and louder. But so too came a peal of laughter from the other side of the thick stone door. Her blood began to seethe. I said stand up!
Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3) Page 55
