Allowing the sword to slip from his hand, he reached down to free the dagger tucked inside his belt. While his fingers searched blindly for the dagger handle, the ever-increasing pressure on his ribs made it feel as though they would cave in completely at any moment. He had gambled, and knew that he might have lost.
At last his fingers made contact and he was able to draw the weapon, but his strength was rushing away like water draining over a mighty waterfall. With his vision badly distorted and hearing nothing but a roaring in his ears, he struck with the dagger at what he hoped was the most vulnerable part of Orn’s back.
The pishaac became aware of what was happening at the very last second. His grip slacked and he threw Akiri to the ground. Crying out in a mixture of pain and fury, he shuffled around while groping behind him. The blade had not sunk more than halfway, but it was positioned in the most awkward part of the back to reach.
Much as Akiri’s body ached for a brief respite, he knew there was no time for such indulgence. Scrambling to his feet, he ran straight at Orn, burying his shoulder into the center of the pishaac’s chest, sending both of them crashing down hard onto the stone floor.
Orn shrieked in agony as the protruding dagger was forced in all the way down to the hilt. Akiri rolled away and raced to retrieve his sword. By the time he had it, Orn was already rising, a look of pure fury burning in his eyes. He took an unsteady step forward, then halted.
“I am not beaten yet, human,” he growled.
“Yes, you are.”
Akiri raised his sword and moved in cautiously. He would not be careless with such a dangerous enemy, even though he was injured. The pishaac crouched and readied himself for the coming onslaught.
His body re-energized by his success, Akiri swung his sword with astounding force at Orn’s head. As before, the pishaac raised his arm to shield himself. But this time Akiri’s blade penetrated nearly an inch deep. He wondered if the injury to Orn’s back had somehow weakened his defenses on the front. The pishaac winced and backed away, but Akiri was determined to press his advantage. Again and again his sword struck, inflicting ever more serious wounds. Orn tried to counter, but no longer had the speed or strength to be effective. Akiri continued to rain deadly steel down upon him until all his limbs were covered in deep gashes and drenched in blood.
At last, Orn’s arms fell limply at his side. He looked at Akiri, this time not with hatred or anger, but in acceptance of his fate. Akiri halted his assault and stepped away.
“If it is in your mind to allow me to leave, know that I cannot,” Orn told him. “The magic that binds me to this place prevents it.”
“That was not my intention,” Akiri replied. “You will die this day. I pause only to offer you a swift death, if you so wish it.”
It was plain to see that the pishaac was struggling to stay on his feet. The amount of blood he had lost was enormous. He was helpless, and Akiri had no desire to prolong the suffering of an opponent who could not defend himself.
Orn regarded him for several moments before slowly nodding. “Thank you. I accept your offer.” He turned and presented his back. “You only just missed my heart the first time. Just a touch below that mark will serve the purpose well.”
The dagger was still buried deep into his flesh. Raising his sword, Akiri thrust the point firmly into the spot suggested. The pishaac gasped just once and then dropped to his knees. After Akiri wrenched the blade free, he planted a boot in the creature’s back and toppled it.
It did not move again.
His death produced a small feeling of regret in Akiri. To slay a being who might be the last of his kind was not something that sat well with him. He creased his brow as he removed his dagger from the body and set about cleaning both of his blades on the pishaac’s corpse. Regret was not a feeling with which he was familiar. All creatures had their time. Should it be now or in a thousand years, it was all the same in the end.
Kyra let out a triumphant roar from outside the courtyard. She, at least, was pleased by the outcome. It was enough to banish ill thoughts and urge him to complete his task.
“We will return home soon,” he told her.
Then, a mere instant after speaking, the memory that King Zemel might not permit Kyra to live struck him mind like a hammer.
“No,” he whispered. “My king would not deny me. Not once I’ve safely returned the Scepter to him.”
But no matter how many times he said this to himself, the doubt plagued him.
Chapter Nineteen
The gates to the temple shrieked with ear-splitting shrillness as Akiri pulled them open.
Ahead of him lay a dank corridor that exuded death and decay.
His keen eyes penetrated the darkness, but he noticed the subtle differences between the powers granted to him as a Dul’Buhar and those he now possessed. Although his strength and endurance seemed much the same as before, there was no doubt that his hearing and sight were less acute than they had been. Colors were less bright and distant sounds more difficult to define.
The passage sloped gently upward for a few hundred feet, with walls that were bare, apart from the disused iron sconces set into them. At the end stood a double door, its wood rotted away and the handles hanging precariously. Above this, ancient letters had been chiseled into the wall.
With open eyes you seek the light,
The sun and sky will banish night,
But only darkness shows the way,
Where winged bat can find its prey.
Akiri read the words several times before reaching for the door. On making contact, the wood crumbled away at his touch. Tossing the ruined pieces aside, he looked beyond into a short passage that ended in a narrow archway bathed in light, banishing all trace of the previous gloom. He couldn’t see the source of the illumination, which only served to make it all the more unnerving.
Drawing his blade, Akiri moved on. On the other side of the archway, the walls were lined with lit torches. He examined them closely – no smoke. Kept alight by magic, he decided.
The corridor soon split left and right, but each direction appeared to be identical. Allowing his instincts to guide him, he headed down the right hand passage, but after a hundred feet or so, this also split two ways. This time he turned left.
Things rapidly became complicated as every few feet the way forward would split yet again. Right – left – left – right – left – Akiri did his best to recall the rapidly increasing number of turns he had made. But after a time even his sharp mind was being taxed to its limit. Eventually he turned back while he was still able to remember the way, but after rounding the corner that should have taken him back to the entrance, he found to his dismay only another hallway. He went over the turns he had taken in his head, certain that he had not made a mistake.
With no other option, he continued to thread his way through the maze, but only found more identical looking turns and passages. Several times he marked the walls with his dagger, but when he attempted to return to the same spot, the marks were always gone.
A cry of frustration slipped out. He would not die this way – lost like a child in the forest. He sat on the floor with his back up against the wall. There had to be a way through. There had to be. For more than an hour, he remained absolutely still while thinking on this, his mind going around in circles. Eventually, he found the final two lines of the poem at the entrance repeating themselves over and over in his mind.
But only darkness shows the way,
To where winged bat can find its prey.
It couldn’t be that simple, he thought. Surely not?
But perhaps it was? Maybe he had been looking for something too complicated?
Standing up, he took a deep cleansing breath, closed his eyes, and simply began to walk. The echoes of his footfalls sounded loud in the confined space.
In less than a minute, the substance of the dark shifted, and he sensed that he had reached the next passage split. Pausing, he listened hard. For a moment, there was no
thing. Then it came to him: he could definitely hear the high-pitched chirping of a bat. It was pulling him to the right.
A smile formed as he followed the sound. Filled with confidence, he walked blindly on. Eight more times he turned, following the guiding call. Then, all at once, a rush of hot air washed over him. He could both hear and feel that the space had opened up in front of him, but the chirping had now stopped. He had reached his next destination. Wherever and whatever that was.
He cracked open his eyes and found that he was in a circular chamber roughly a hundred feet in diameter. The maze had gone. Only the ruined door remained.
Deep recesses had been cut into the wall every few feet. Inside each stood a life-sized statue of a chain mail-clad warrior holding a longsword in one hand and a small round shield in the other. There were no other doors that Akiri could see. But on the floor was another etching of ancient letters.
When battles rage and blood is spilled,
The warrior’s heart is truly filled,
But rage and lust will help you naught,
When comes the fight that must be fought.
He had no time to consider these words. A loud crack had his hand flying to his sword. One of the stone warriors had stepped down onto the floor, longsword leveled. Its movements were slow and labored as it lumbered toward him.
Taking the initiative, he struck the warrior just above its hip, but rather than a loud ringing of steel on stone, the statue simply crumbled to dust the moment his sword made contact.
Akiri stepped away, concerned that it was too easy.
A moment later, his concern was justified.
Another statue in the wall came to life, and the empty place where the first one had stood was now occupied by two identical stone figures. Akiri dispatched these just as easily, but the moment they fell, another came to life. Again the empty spaces were filled. How many of these could he fight, he wondered? More than most men. But even he had limits.
There were soon well over a dozen stone warriors for him to keep at bay, though the situation was not yet critical. Their movements were so slow; it would take a lot more than this to overwhelm him. Only one of them had been able to get close enough to start swinging his sword at Akiri before being turned to dust. But it was obvious that against an enemy that was both tireless and perpetually multiplying, there could only be one eventual outcome.
Positioning himself between two of the recesses to avoid being flanked, Akiri fought on. His sword was a blur of silver light as he mowed down his opponents like a farmer harvesting wheat. But the faster he mowed, the faster the chamber filled with yet more warriors.
Dust from the fallen statues covered the floor; more of it clung to Akiri’s sweat-soaked skin. He could feel his strength beginning to falter, and much as the thought of retreat disgusted him, he knew the only sensible course was to flee the chamber and live to fight another day. His eyes shot over to the entrance, but where the broken door had once been there was now nothing but a solid wall. There was no longer any way out. Unless he could discover how to defeat these cursed things, he would most surely die.
While continuing to swing his sword, he thought again about the riddle etched on the floor that was now completely obscured by at least two inches of stone dust. The answer to this felt just as much out of sight. No matter how hard he considered the problem, only one solution came to mind. But it was one that went against his every normal instinct. If he was wrong, he would unquestionably die; but that was looking certain anyway, so what did he have to lose?
Gathering his remaining strength, he let loose a flurry of blows to clear away a small space at his feet. He then dropped to his knees and cast aside his sword. The mass of stone enemies converged on him, their swords held aloft ready to deal a killing stroke. Akiri lowered his head as if in submission and waited.
Even allowing for the slow movements of his foes, it still felt like an eternity before anything happened. In an instant, the air became still and the statues froze into place. The one standing closest to him had his sword hovering only inches above Akiri’s head. He was still moving away when there was a sharp clicking sound, like a giant snapping his fingers. One by one, the statues crumbled to dust, filling the room with a choking gray cloud.
Akiri covered his eyes and nose until the dust gradually settled. All he could concentrate on was the single line of verse repeating in his head:
When comes the fight that must be fought.
He laughed aloud. The poem was referring to the inner battle. Rage and lust would be of no help at all in that fight. Quite the opposite, in fact. For a true warrior, to fight against his natural instinct to do battle when attacked was an almost impossible task. More so for a Dul’Buhar.
As he picked up his sword, a narrow door appeared in the wall to his left. Pushing it open, he stepped cautiously through into a cavernous space which had no rights being inside a temple. The place made his skin crawl. The jagged walls and uneven floor told him that this was a natural formation, though the six-foot-tall white marble obelisk standing close to the far wall was obviously not. Torches set on either side clearly illuminated the words of yet another riddle written on the front.
Your strength and mind should be commended,
And now your journey is nearly ended,
There are no more puzzles for you to solve,
Just a simple stroll to test your resolve.
Almost at the moment he finished reading, there was a loud rumble and the ground trembled so violently that he was forced to cling to the obelisk in order to keep on his feet. A few yards away, the floor began to crumble and split. The gap became wider and wider until finally a chasm of more than thirty feet across and spanning the entire breadth of the cavern had opened up. Steam spewed from its depths, striking the ceiling and then raining down searingly hot tiny droplets upon him.
The noise eventually faded and the ground became still. Akiri saw that the chasm had filled to the brim with wildly boiling water. As he approached, the heat from this rose up to blast his face and arms. On the other side of the gap, tantalizingly inviting him to enter, was a silver door set into the wall.
Akiri knew that even he was not capable of leaping such a great distance, and to immerse himself in the water could only mean instant death. He then caught sight of a row of objects just below the surface of the water. Columns of stone just large enough to stand upon were rising up from the depths, though not reaching all the way to the surface. He should be able to hop from one to the next and so reach the other side. But it would be at a terrible cost. His feet would be boiled in the process.
As the poem stated, this would indeed test his resolve. Closing his eyes, he settled his mind. The pain would be intense, but he would endure. He would accept it as being a part of himself. He was Akiri. His will was iron.
The first step sent great waves of pain shooting through him, yet he merely sucked his teeth for the briefest of moments and looked to the next column. He focused all his thoughts on getting to the far side. But not even his mental discipline could prevent the physical damage that was being done to his feet and ankles, testing his endurance to its extreme limits. Each column he came to was set slightly deeper than the last, and by the time he was halfway across, the water was up to his shins. A series of low grunts slipped out as he continued to fight back the agony.
When there were only two steps remaining the water was up to his thighs and the pain was virtually unbearable, but the end was near. After stepping onto the final column, he let out a savage cry of both triumph and agony and leapt the remaining distance.
Gasping and croaking, he dragged himself away from the chasm edge, no longer able to stand. This was as far as he would go. He knew this. Although he had managed to endure the pain, the injuries he’d suffered had left him unable to walk. He had seen before what boiling water could do to a man’s flesh. It did not simply damage the skin; it cooked all the way through to the bone, leaving a limb useless… permanently.
He hesitated before daring to look at his ruined legs. As he moved, it was like a switch had been flicked. From burning agony, suddenly there was no pain at all. His legs were completely dry and showed no sign of any blisters or redness. What was more, the water in the chasm had now ceased to boil, and ice was slowly forming on its surface.
Still hardly able to believe what he was seeing, Akiri reached down to touch his lower legs. It was true; they were healed. That, or they had never been injured, he realized. The rapidly cooling air drew forth a huge and heartfelt sigh of relief.
Standing up, he regarded the silver door. There were no riddles carved anywhere he could see, but he wasn’t yet ready to declare victory. Nothing could be certain until he had the Scepter in his hands and he was away from this place.
The door opened when he drew near, as if in polite invitation. Akiri paused to cast a glance behind before entering, hoping that the ice would remain in place long enough for him to be able to cross back again should that route be necessary. Beyond the threshold, he saw a room thirty feet long and twice that across. At the rear lay an altar of onyx and gold, upon which stood a jade statue depicting a howling wolf. There, resting at the feet of this creature, lay the object he had fought so long and hard to find – the Scepter of Xarbaal. It was unmistakable. The old man’s drawing didn’t do it justice. Diamonds, rubies, and emeralds crusted the shaft, glittering around the arcane scrawl of symbols etched into the gold. But it was the claw at the top and the black stone it secured that offered a glimpse of its true nature.
This was a thing of power.
Akiri could not prevent a deep sigh of satisfaction from slipping out. This was the object that would give him his old life back. Every corner of the room was piled high with gold, silver, and precious jewels – enough to make a man a king should he so desire – but Akiri had eyes for none of it. He was driven by duty, not treasures. The Dul’Buhar would provide all he ever needed.
Akiri: The Scepter of Xarbaal Page 23
