The mosaic warrior stalked her, his savage expression exactly the same as when he had existed only as a decoration set in the floor. He swiped at her with the blade—revealing then that while he had the height and width of a living creature, he had no more depth to his form than the tiny stones from which he had been created.
Not for a moment, though, did Kara think this any weakness. The magic that had created such a guardian would not have made him so fragile. Physically striking the mosaic warrior would likely be just like striking a stone wall. She also suspected that the blade would cut just as well as, if not better than, a real one freshly sharpened.
But what had set him into action? Surely Drognan did not set out such a welcome for everyone who walked through the door. No, more likely Kara had been identified by some hidden spell as a necromancer, a dark mage of unknown loyalties. She knew of such detection spells and knew also that many mages utilized them for their own safety. Had Kara not suffered through so much of late, the enchantress felt certain she would have recalled such information earlier—when it might have prevented this deadly encounter.
Rattling came from the floor just behind her macabre assailant, and to the necromancer’s consternation, a second warrior arose to join the first. Kara then turned quickly to her right, where yet more noise marked the awakening of a third.
“I mean no harm,” she whispered. “I seek your master.” Did they even serve Drognan? Kara only assumed that she had come to the right place. Perhaps someone the enchantress had talked to earlier had recognized her for what she was and had sent her here to die . Many, especially those of the Zakarum faith, would have considered the loss of a necromancer no loss at all.
The first of the mosaics had nearly come within the striking range of his sword. Kara saw no other choice but to take the offensive.
The words of the spell tripped off her tongue as the necromancer clutched the icon of Trag’Oul and pointed at her first attacker. At the same time, Kara stepped back as a precaution. If her spell worked, the incredible forces she summoned might not be contained to the destruction of the magical guardian.
A swarm of toothy projectiles formed from thin air, then rained down on the nearest of the mosaic warriors. The Den’Trag , or Teeth of the Dragon Trag’Oul , ripped through the stone body of the guardian, scattering small squares everywhere. The warrior tried to move, but his legs and arms, now missing so many pieces, crumbled. Still wearing his scowl, he attempted one last thrust at her, then collapsed in a shower of stone.
Kara exhaled, relieved to be rid of at least one adversary but praying she still had the strength to deal with the others. Summoning the Den’Trag had taken much out of the already-weary necromancer. Yet, if Kara could do it twice more and thus completely eliminate her unliving foes, then perhaps she could rest afterward.
Once again the necromancer clutched the icon tight, muttering the spell. A few words more and—
An intense rattling all around her caused Kara to falter. She glanced down, saw the many bits of mosaic stone from the fallen warrior now rolling toward one another, gathering in a swiftly growing pile behind the others. To her horror, first the feet, then the legs reformed. Bit by bit the stone warrior rebuilt himself, none the worse for her destructive spell.
The Teeth of Trag’Oul had failed her. Stepping back, Kara entered the darkened hall leading to the doorway. She had other spells at her command, but, combined with her weakness and the enclosed surroundings, none of them seemed likely to help her quickly enough without risking her own life further.
“Verikos!” a voice called. “Verikos . . . Dianysi!”
The ungodly trio paused at the cry . . . then each warrior abruptly collapsed, the individual stones dropping to the ground with a harsh clatter that echoed throughout the ancient structure. The stones, however, did not rest where they lay, but rather began to quickly roll back to where the figures had originally been set in the ground, each bit of mosaic returning to its precise location. One by one, they fell into place. Within seconds, the menacing fighters had not only retreated from their attack but had completely reformed as images on the elegant floor.
Kara turned to thank her rescuer, certain that it had to be the enigmatic Drognan. “I thank you for your aid—”
The figure that stood before her could hardly be the venerable, elegantly clad Vizjerei the vendor and others had described. Advanced age seemed the only thing this wild-eyed beggar with long white hair and beard had in common with the mage in question, although even Drognan could not be as old as this man looked. While still somewhat firm of body, his skin had grown so wrinkled and his watery blue eyes so weary that surely he had to be the oldest human alive in all the world.
He put a gnarled finger to thin lips. “Hush!” the beggar whispered much too loudly. “So much evil about! So much danger! We shouldn’t have come here!”
“Are you . . . are you Drognan?”
The elderly man blinked, looked confused, then patted his worn, silk robe as if looking for something. After several seconds of this, he finally looked up and replied, “No . . . no, of course not! Now hush! There’s too much evil about! We’ve got to be careful! We’ve got to be on guard!”
Kara considered. This man had to be a servant or something similar to the mage. Perhaps Drognan even kept him here out of pity for the beggar’s madness. She decided to get to the point. Perhaps enough sanity remained within the man so that he could help her with the Vizjerei. “I have to see your master, Drognan. Tell him it concerns something of interest to him, Bartuc’s—-”
“Bartuc?” Aghastly change came over the beggar as he shouted the dead warlord’s name. “ Bartuc! No! The evil’s come! I warned you!”
At that moment, another voice called out from the entrance of the building. “Who is it? Who has invaded my sanctum?”
The necromancer turned to speak, but the ragged man moved with amazing swiftness. He clamped a hand over her mouth, then whispered, “Hush! We mustn’t be heard! It might be Bartuc!”
Instead, the newcomer proved to be a Vizjerei—and likely the one for whom Kara had been searching. Curiously, he looked as if he had been in some accident, for he had bruises over much of his face and seemed in discomfort each time he put pressure on his right leg. In the crook of one arm, the elderly mage carried a small package. She had no doubt that here stood Drognan, newly arrived from some errand.
“Norrec?” he called. “Vizharan?”
He knew the man Kara hunted! She tried to speak, but for a rather spindly figure, the beggar had incredible strength.
“Hush!” her unwanted companion whispered. “So much evil about! We must be careful! We mustn’t be seen!”
Drognan stepped closer, surely able to see them now— and yet, he peered past both intruders as if seeing only air.
“Curious . . .” He sniffed the air, then frowned. “Smells as if a necromancer was about . . . but that’s absurd.” Drognan glanced at the floor, at the warriors in particular. “Yes . . . absurd.”
He continued to stare, as if lost in thought. Not once did the mage so much as notice the struggling woman or her odd captor. At last, the sorcerer shook his head, muttered to himself about another lost trail and the need to keep searching, then—much to Kara’s dismay—walked past her and the madman. Drognan continued on, heading into the darkness, heading toward the doorway she had earlier sought.
Heading away from someone in desperate need of his aid.
Only when he vanished behind the door did the tattered figure pull his hand from her lips. Planting his face next to hers, he whispered, “We’ve stayed too long! We’d better go back! Been out much too long! He might find us!”
She knew that he did not mean Drognan. No, judging by his earlier reaction, her captor could only mean one other— Bartuc.
He led her along the sculpted floor, to the very center, where the unknown artisan had built out of mosaic tiles an intricate temple like those that might have existed in legendary Viz-jun. Kara would not
have followed him that far, but, as with the revenants, the choice of what her body did no longer remained hers. The necromancer could not even call out.
“Soon we’ll be safe!” the madcap figure muttered to her. “Soon we’ll be safe!”
He stomped down once with his right foot—and suddenly the doorway of the temple opened, deepened, becoming an oval hole in the floor in which the necromancer could see a set of steps leading to—to where?
“Come, come!” her captor chided her. “Before Bartuc finds us! Come, come!”
Unable to do otherwise, she followed him down into the earth, down toward a distant, yellowish light. As Kara stepped below the level of the floor, the enchantress sensed the stones shifting, the image of the Vizjerei temple returning to its prior state.
“We’ll be safe down here,” the mad hermit assured her, seeming somewhat more calm now. “My brother will never find us here . . .”
Brother? Had she heard right?
“Horazon?” Kara blurted, surprised not only by her conclusion but that she could now articulate it. Evidently her captor had no concerns about anyone hearing her underneath layers of rock and earth.
He looked right at her, the watery eyes focusing hard for the first time. “Do we know each other? I don’t think we know each other . . .” When she did not respond immediately, he shrugged and continued on with the trek, still mumbling. “I’m sure we don’t know each other, but we might know each other . . .”
Kara Nightshadow still had no choice but to follow, not that she much noticed at the moment. Her thoughts reeled, her world entirely turned upside-down.
She had come in search of the Warlord of Blood’s armor and had found instead—even despite the many centuries that had passed since their time—Bartuc’s living, breathing, and much hated brother .
Incredible heat assailed Norrec as he at last came back to his senses. At first he imagined that a fire must have started in Drognan’s sanctum, perhaps through the arcane powers of the sinister armor. However, gradually the veteran became aware that the heat, while harsh, did not burn and, in fact, surely had to be from the sun itself.
Rolling over onto his back, Norrec shielded his eyes and tried to get his bearings, only to find a sea of sand in every direction. He grimaced, wondering where he had landed now. In the distance, Norrec thought he noticed darkness, as if a storm approached from that direction. Could Lut Gholein lay somewhere underneath those clouds? It seemed wherever he went, the storm followed. If that were the case now, then at least he knew that he had materialized somewhere west or northwest of the coastal kingdom.
But why?
Drognan had said something about the armor having tricked them. How true those words had been. It had played both the Vizjerei and him for fools, no doubt seeking the mage’s aid in locating its goal. Could that have been Horazon’s tomb, as Drognan believed? If so, why had Norrec ended up out here in the middle of nowhere?
With great effort, the battered and worn soldier rose. Judging by the sun, he had a little more than an hour or two before nightfall. The walk back to Lut Gholein would take far longer than that, likely two days—and that providing Norrec actually survived the trek. More important, he could not even be certain that the suit would let him return. If what it sought lay out here, it would do everything it could to remain in the desert.
Norrec took a few steps, testing the armor’s resolve. When it did nothing to prevent him from heading toward the city, he increased his pace as best he could. At the very least, Norrec needed to find some shelter for the night and the only hope of that lay in a twisted hill of rock barely visible ahead. It would take him until sunset to reach the hill, if not longer, which meant that, despite the heat, he had to move even quicker.
His legs ached horribly as Norrec pushed on. The loose sand and high dunes made it tough going and often Norrec lost sight of his goal for quite some time. He even found himself turned around at one point, the swirling dunes shifting in size and direction even as he tried to cross them.
Yet, despite all that, the hill soon became an aspiration possible to achieve. Norrec prayed that he would find moisture of some sort there; his short time in the desert had already parched him. If he did not find water soon, it would not matter whether he made it to the hill or—
A large, winged shadow crossed over his own . . . followed immediately by a second.
Norrec looked up, trying to see against the sun. He caught glimpses of two or three airborne forms, but could not make them out. Vultures? Quite possible in Aranoch, but these looked much larger and not quite avian in some ways. Norrec’s hand slipped to where his sword would have been and once more he cursed Bartuc’s armor for putting him through such horrors without a decent weapon of his own.
Despite his flagging strength, the veteran doubled his pace. If he could reach the rock, it would provide him with some defense against the marauding birds. Vultures tended to be scavengers, but this flock looked more aggressive and, in some way he could still not define, unsettling.
The shadows passed over him again, this time much larger, much more distinct. The creatures had descended for a better look.
He barely sensed in time the feathered form dropping on him from behind. With instincts honed on the battlefield, Norrec threw himself to the ground just as talons as great as his hand scraped across his armored back and managed to briefly snag his hair. The hardened fighter grunted as he rolled over, ready to face the birds. Surely he could scare off a few vultures, especially once he let them see he would not simply lie down and die for them.
But these were no vultures . . . although their ancestry had certainly come from those desert scavengers.
Nearly as tall as a man and with the wings and head of the avian they so resembled, the four grotesque creatures fluttered just above him, talons on both their feet and their almost human hands ready to tear his head from his body. Their tails ended in whips that lashed out at Norrec as he desperately tried to back away. The demonic birds let out harsh cries as they tried to surround their wouldbe victim, cries that made Norrec’s pulse pound.
He waited for the suit to do something, but Bartuc’s armor remained dormant. Swearing, Norrec braced himself. If he had to die here, he would not die like a lamb because he had come to depend on the armor for so much. Nearly all his life, he had served in one war or another. This battle represented little different.
One of the monstrous vultures came within his grasp. Moving with more speed than he thought himself capable of at this point, Norrec seized it by one of its legs and threw it to the ground. Despite their size, the desert terrors were astoundingly light, no doubt because, like their ancestors, their bones were designed for flight. He took advantage of that, using his own considerable mass to pin the shrieking creature down, then twisting the head as hard as he could.
The three survivors harried him even harder as he rose from the limp form, but a different Norrec faced them now, one who had, for the first time in many days, fought a battle of his own and won. As the second dove at him, he grabbed a handful of sand and threw it in the vulpine horror’s eyes. The demonic bird blindly whipped its tail at him, giving the veteran soldier the chance to seize the deadly appendage in both hands.
Squawking, the creature tried to fly free. However, Norrec spun the massive avian around again and again, driving back the other pair at the same time. The talons of his captured foe scraped futilely on his gauntleted hands, Bartuc’s armor well protecting its host.
Norrec’s blood surged. His attackers had come to represent to him more than simply the dangers of the desert. In many ways, they now became the brunt of all his frustration and fury. He had suffered through too many terrible events, suffered too many horrors, and not once had been able to do anything about them. Powerful enchantments saturated the warlord’s armor and yet none of it obeyed him. Had it been his to command, he would have used the sorcery of the suit to roast the demonic beast he now held, turn it and its dire companions into fireballs.
<
br /> His gloves suddenly glowed bright red.
Eagerly, Norrec eyed them, then stared at the vulture demon. Yes, a blazing inferno . . .
He grabbed the furious avian by the neck. The savage beak tried to tear out his face, only increasing his determination to end this battle as quickly and decisively as possible.
Norrec glared at the monster. “Burn!”
With a garbled shriek, the winged terror burst into flames, perishing in an instant.
Wasting not a second, the fighter threw the fiery carcass into the nearest of the two survivors, setting that one aflame, too. The last of the avians quickly turned about, flying away as if the hounds of Hell pursued. Norrec paid its retreat no mind, content to finishing off the third.
Its feathers seared away, it tried to emulate its sole surviving comrade, but it had already suffered too much injury. Unable to do more than rise a foot or two above the ground, it could not escape the vengeful fighter. Norrec seized it by one wing, letting the now-pathetic monster claw at his breast plate while he took it by the head.
With one quick jerk, Norrec snapped its neck.
In truth, the battle had taken only a minute or two, but in that short span the veteran soldier had transformed. As he dropped the feathered corpse to the sand, Norrec felt a thrill such as he had never experienced in any war. Not only had he triumphed against the odds, but for once the cursed armor had obeyed him. Norrec flexed the fingers, truly admiring the workmanship of the gloves for the first time. Perhaps the encounter with Drognan had changed everything; perhaps now that which had driven the armor to such lengths had finally given in, had even accepted its host as its master . . .
Perhaps he could test it. Surely after all he had seen it do, the armor could perform one basic task at his command.
Diablo #1: Legacy of Blood Page 22
