Lady of Poison p-1

by Bruce R Cordell

  The cleric knew his speech was too short, but he didn’t quite know where to go from there. Ash was not taking any special action or initiative, unlike what he had imagined, except, of course, her mere presence may have been the only reason he and her other companions yet drew breath following the Rotting Man’s initial assault.

  The Rotting Man hacked out laughter. Chuckling wet gasps of amusement, he finally said, “You have brought her to me, haven’t you? All my effort to bring her here, yet where all my servants have failed, you succeed. Marvelous!”

  “Not true… you were trying to kill Ash. Kill her so the Aspect could never take full shape.”

  “No, I’m afraid not, young simpleton.”

  “You fought us hard enough just outside the ring of your fortress,” replied Marrec, confused.

  “It is true I expended many of my servitors, many more than I thought I would, truth be told. I did not foresee that you would make common cause with a demon. If I had not thrown my forces against you, you would have begun to wonder why I offered no resistance here at the heart of my strength. You would have wondered if you were walking into a trap, which indeed you were.”

  The Rotting Man went on, “You have something that I require. It may be that it retains sentience enough to protect itself and you against my direct touch. However, experience reveals that my servitors are under no such restriction.”

  The figure on the throne oroaked something to Damanda. In turn, Damanda screamed, “Bring the child to the Talontyr; kill her guardians.”

  Marrec brought up his left hand, his thumb already flipping the cork from the vial he held. As the creatures surrounding the Nentyarch surged forward, Marrec gulped down the contents of his vial. Of his friends, only Gunggari did the same; Elowen raised her living blade and gave voice to a cry of challenge; Ususi began to incant a spell. Ash did nothing.

  The rot-eyed satyr charged Marrec, its head down and the ram-like horns positioned to smash him. The elixir Marrec had just drunk, fruity and pleasant, seemed to open his sinuses and expand his lungs. The potion was nothing less than liquid revelation, laying bare all that was shrouded, even Marrec’s own clogged conscious. Facts about himself broke free from his subconscious and begin to bob toward his surface awarenessbut he didn’t have time to take note. More than anything else, the elixir opened a door, however briefly, that had been shut in Marrec’s mindit made a connection where association had fallen away over the last few yearsit granted him a channel to Lurue’s grace.

  The blighted satyr collided with Marrec, sending Justlance clattering from his hand, yet the cleric smiled. Not because he retained his feet despite the charge, not because his spear returned to his grip almost instantly Marrec smiled because unfeigned hope woke within him as he contemplated the array of abilities returned him.

  Gunggari smashed the carapace of a five-foot-high beetle, then engaged the green-hued unicorn in a desperate battlethe Oslander attempted to beat the unicorn senseless before the blighted creature succeeded in eviscerating Gunggari with its blackened horn.

  The pack of blighted nixies swarmed Elowen. The elf wove a defense by slashing Dymondheart too quickly for even a nixie to penetrate. She cursed when one still managed that feat and promptly bit Elowen with too-large teeth stained midnight black.

  Ususi’s chant grew louder; in Marrec’s experience, that indicated that a spell of power would soon be unleashed. Damanda then said, “UsusiI command you to slay these who you call your friends.”

  Ususi choked, ceased incanting, and instead began to slowly reach for the yellow wand at her belt. Her arm shook, and her hand moved only slowly, as if she fought her own hand’s movement every inch of the way, yet progress was made.

  The cleric began a chant of his ownwith his new connection to Lurue, he felt he could dispel the evil influence that allowed Damanda to instruct Ususi. The damned satyr charged him yet again, spoiling what would have been his first god-given spell in days.

  Marrec screamed in a fury quite unlike his normal manner, then was forced to defend himself physically with Justlance. Instead of incanting a spell, he yelled between spear thrusts, “Gunny, stop Ususi!”

  The Oslander was pressed just then by a growling wolf that’d lost most of its skin to a cancerous scab that made its flesh particularly resistant to Gunggari’s warclub.

  Damanda laughed as Ususi’s hand closed about the Wand of Citrine Power. The wizard drew the wand from its slender sheath, her face contorted as she fought the compulsion.

  A shaft of brilliance like the sun’s, full and true, touched down then, piercing the mist, the overhanging petrified branches, the storm, and even the night. It fell around Elowen, who was holding her blade above her head, its shining surface reflecting and sustaining the sunlight. Elowen brought the blade quickly down from its position above her head, pointing it directly at Damanda, who still stood beside the Talontyr on his earthen throne.

  A ray of citrine probed at Elowen from Ususi’s shaking wand. The wavering ray failed to find its target, but Ususi took aim anew, shaking her head as if denying her actions.

  The greater shaft of sunlight surrounding Elowen changed its focus, sliding smoothly away from the elf and toward the target identified by her pointing blade. Elowen yelled, triumphant “Meet the day unbound!”

  Damanda screeched, backpedaling. The Rotting Man raised an eyebrow in apparent interest, nothing more. The shaft of light slid across the intervening blighted creatures without harm, moving more swiftly as it approached Damanda.

  The vampire began to run, but the shaft of light caught her, just as Ususi’s second wand-aimed ray struck the elf hunter in the back. In a moment, Elowen was encased in a slab of amber-like crystal, unmoving.

  The following beam of sunlight was undimmed and flashed full upon the fleeing blightlord. Damanda’s scream was so horrible that even the Rotting Man’s forces paused a moment to determine the vampire’s fate.

  When the shaft winked out a moment later it was established once again what happens when a vampire is subject to sunlight.

  It dies.

  Marrec, having recently witnessed another vampire’s fiery death in similar fashion, recovered a moment quicker than the hollow-socketed satyr. His erstwhile foe sank to the earth, stupidly clutching a newly created third cavity in its skull, courtesy of the cleric’s spear.

  The blighted unicorn turned away from the crystal-encased Elowen and charged Gunggari from the side. The Oslander avoided being disemboweled by the horn but received a nasty wound across his side.

  Marrec saw that Ususi was back in control of her faculties. He’d have to trust her to release Elowen from the confinement she’d created. He lunged sidewise, catching the blighted unicorn with the untainted unicorn tip of Justlance. The contact instigated an instant and dramatic response from the blighted creatureits eyes rolled wildly; it reared, neighing, then it collapsed.

  The scabrous wolf leaped again at Gunggari, growling and slavering. Again the Oslander beat back the wolf.

  Marrec didn’t want to shift too far over to help the Oslanderhe needed to plug up the middle, between the Oslander and the slab of crystal holding Elowen otherwise nothing would protect little Ash who still sheltered at his back.

  Ususi finally found her voice, cried out, “I can release the elf,” then began casting anew.

  Gunggari’s dizheri finally found purchasethe wolf yelped, rolled, then ran off into the mist. Another creature immediately moved to take its placea twigblight.

  Worse, additional blighted creatures threatened to break around the other side of Gunggari, Marrec, and Elowen’s line that protected Ash. Ususi remained in the midst of a spell. Marrec quickly counted all that still stood between himself and the Rotting Man. He estimated only about ten or so enemies. With his connection to Lurue back, he wondered if he couldn’t catch them allor at least mostin a burst of holy power tuned to banish evil.

  Ususi finished her last spell. With a tinkling of shattering glass, Elowen shed her crystal cont
ainment. The elf shook her head, looking around to see what she had missed.

  “Hold, my creatures,” spoke the Rotting Man.

  The blighted creatures paused in their onslaught, uncertain of their master’s command. Marrec and Gunggari paused, too, wondering what deal the Talontyr might be willing to offer. The Talontyr was getting nervous, guessed Marrec

  “I tire of this game. I begin to think you’ll pierce my defenses, and what? You’ll attack me directly, Talona’s Chosen?” The Rotting Man laughed.

  Marrec considered throwing Justlance right then, or perhaps moving just a bit closer in order to bring his gaze to bear, but the Rotting Man continued speaking. “While it might be edifying for you to begin such a contest, it is beneath me. It’s more fitting, really, that you meet your end at the hands of that which you’ve come so far to meet.”

  The Rotting Man half turned on his seat, still choosing to sit even in the presence of his enemies. He waved his hand toward the great cyst bulging from the base of the tree behind his throne. He said, “Yes, Talona informed me far ahead of time of the Green Powers’ gift to the world I moved to intercept it. I grew the Thieving Ash to snare the divine energies of the gift as it was born into the world Those energies are contained therein, infused with my own special touch, Talona’s blessing, and the goad of continual pain.”

  Marrec whispered, “Thieving Ash?” He looked around at the girl behind him. The child’s eyes focused then on the cyst, as if she expected something wonderful to emergeor something terrible.

  The Talontyr, nearly giggling in sudden glee, continued, “Yes, the child there with you is the portion of the Green Powers’ gift that slipped through my fingers. Thank you for delivering it to me. Finally! The entire gift is now mine.”

  “Behold, then,” continued the Talontyr, “what has become of the Aspect of Light. Behold Talona’s Step-Daughter!”

  The fleshy flaps obscuring the partially burst cavity heaved and ripped. A fantastically large bubble of blood swelled darkly from the fissure, and immediately burst, releasing a wave of liquid in every direction. Shrieking, the blighted creatures surrounding the throne scattered before the scarlet flood, though the Rotting Man laughed as the stinking bile poured over him.

  Something still fought to free itself from the cystsomething too large for Marrec to immediately comprehend. It heaved itself free of the cavity, showing first a vast expanse of festering flesh twenty or thirty feet on a side, like the side of a hill come to life. The heaving, pulsing body was supported by four wide legs, elephantine in their simplicity and shape but larger, yet the struggling monstrosity, when it finally extricated itself from its woody chrysalis, was headless. It was a vast mass of gross flesh supported by four massive legs with no front or rear, only body. Except… something protruded from the creature.

  A slender horn, convoluted and fluted, but straight and spear-sharp at the end, jutted from the infeeted flesh. The horn was over fifteen feet in length if it was an inch, yet Marrec recognized its likeness from the first. The horn was like a unicorn’s.

  “Abomination!” The words tore themselves from Marrec’s throat. The wrongness of the creature, the warped nature of its existence, the plight of the Giftit was all too much for the cleric to bear. He ran forward, past the throne on which the Rotting Man sat. A look of intense concentration suffused the Talontyr’s face, but Marrec barely noted it as he moved closer to the vast bulk.

  Gunggari ran forward with Marrec. The Oslander was more nimble than Marrec remembered, jumping and leaping ahead with newfound vigor. Perhaps it was the influence of the Nentyarch’s final vial? Gunggari moved so quickly that he passed the cleric, running up so he was nearly beneath the Daughter. Utilizing his forward charge, Gunggari swung his dizheri around, two-handed, delivering a mighty blow upon the creature’s lower flank. The Daughter’s flesh rippled, and from somewhere, though no orifice was visible, a basso scream erupted.

  The Daughter’s single horn slashed through the air with uncanny speed, nearly decapitating Gunggariit would have, were it not for the Oslander’s newfound quickness.

  Marrec began incanting a spell, a spell he’d been unable to cast for months, a defensive spell. As soon as he felt its protective embrace enfold him like an old friend long missed, Marrec continued forward. He would try first his newfound connection with Luruehe would try to turn the creature from its present course, perhaps break it from the control of the Rotting Man.

  Bringing his spear up, Marrec bellowed, “Lurue commands that you give way, abomination. Turn your face and be destroyed.”

  His spear head, its shape that of a stylized unicorn horn, blazed with golden light. Unlike when he had tried this same ability against the vampires, his power did not break. He radiated a surge of holy power, which washed upon and over the Daughter.

  The creature’s entire bulk shook, and a deep cry issued again from some unseen maw, but the creature would not be turned from its directive. The horn slashed forward, elongating as it moved, spearing at Marrec with a life-ending thrust. If not for the cleric’s just-cast defensive spell, he’d have been skewered. Still, the shock of the thrust sent him stumbling back.

  By that time Elowen charged the Daughter, too. She came up to the creature several feet from where Gunggari danced, trying to keep from being trampled beneath the creature’s stamping feet. Fancy sword-work was impossibleshe faced a creature too large for such nicetiesit was too mindless to be distracted by feints and too massive for a blade to deflect a horn-thrust or a trampling foot.

  Elowen ran up and shoved Dymondheart directly into the side of the creature, all the way to the hilt. Then she began to saw the blade back and forth, trying to lever the wound into something much larger. A spray of vile matter, fecal by its stench, began to spray from the widening wound, but the elf hunter had no time to finish her task. The massive horn, supernatural in its ability to elongate and shorten at need, found a new mark. The Daughter’s horn swiveled and struck, slamming lengthwise into Elowen’s body. The elf was sent bodily flying through the air, Dymondheart spiraling away the opposite direction. When Elowen rolled to a stop, she failed to rise.

  Ususi finally entered the fight, this time on the side of her friends. A ray of yellow stabbed forth from her wand, but she targeted not the monster but its progenitor. The ray fell full upon the Talontyr as he sat his throne. A flash of amber and a crack that competed with the thunder still rumbling above followed. The Rotting Man was unfazed The power washed away from him with no effect, other than to catch his attention.

  As Marrec cast Justlance deep into the side of the Daughtercausing the creature to buck and squirm, but only in apparent annoyancethe Rotting Man spared a splinter of his attention for Ususi.

  He said, “You sought my attentionsee what you make of it.”

  He gestured, and a wave of muck and rot gathered and flowed from around his throne, building, cresting and falling upon the wavering Ususi.

  Where the wave passed, the imaskari stood unharmed, surprised to still retain her life. Ash’s influence still protected them from the Rotting Man’s direct power. Indeed, Ususi had moved to stand ahead of the child, even in her fear thinking to protect Ash. It was the child who offered their only protection there in the Court of the Rotting Man.

  Marrec glanced back at Elowen. The elf had not stirred from where the Daughter’s horn had thrown her. Marrec realized she was out of the fight. He didn’t dwell on how hurt she might be. If they were unable stop the Daughter, they would all find themselves in a similar or worse state soon enough.

  Time again to bring his gaze to bear. The Daughter had no eyes. Could he even affect that corruption of divine energy given life? He opened wide his eyes and reached again for the feeling in the back of his mind, the core of ferocity, the ember of his heritage. He called upon the gaze of the medusa.

  Invisible lines of influence plunged from Marrec’s eyes, instantly wracking his head with pain. Where his gaze touched upon the Daughter’s side, flesh bubbledbubbled, t
hen ceased all motion, as flesh became stone. He couldn’t encompass the creature in a single lookhe had to paint the Daughter with his gaze, moving left to right, right to left, and in the wake of his passing glance, flesh gave over to stone.

  The Daughter reared up. A massive slab of hardened stone sloughed away to reveal terrible pink flesh within. The slab of stone, once part of the Daughter’s side, smashed into rubble, forcing Gunggari to skip away, though a few chunks caught the Oslander on the side, drawing blood. Marrec didn’t care. His power was overcoming that of the Daughter. His vision began to fill with red, blood pooling in his sockets from the strain, but still he pumped his force of will through the connection he’d made with the Daughter, through the thrumming invisible line of his sight.

  Gunggari’s wail of agony was as water on the fire of his effort. The force of his gaze winked out immediately. The Daughter, rearing, had caught Gunggari. The Oslander was down. Down, too, came those hideously heavy feet, stamping. Gunggari rolled, but his pain hindered him, and he couldn’t roll far enough. The Daughter’s foot smashed down upon the tattooed soldier, breaking bones and bursting flesh. The tattooed soldier joined the elf hunter in stillness.

  If Gunggari by some miracle retained grasp on life, his bleeding body would soon betray that effort without immediate tending. Marrec didn’t waste time thinking about ithe simply ran full out for his friend’s side. Where he presumed that Elowen yet survived her contact with the Daughter, he knew his friend would not. He might already be dead.

  A geyser of fiery energy poured down upon the flank of the Daughter, distracting it long enough for Marrec to reach Gunggari’s side. Ususi was still in the fight and unleashing her most potent spells against the rampaging horror.

  The cleric felt for the tattooed warrior’s pulsefaint, growing fainter, but still beating. Marrec called joyfully on his renewed link to Lurue and poured healing into his friend, but Gunggari’s flesh was grievously wounded. The Oslander opened his eyes but remained prone. He had managed to stabilize Gunggari, stop the bleeding. That would have to be enough.