Obsidian Ridge

by Jess Lebow

  At the same time, he’d been following this compass for a long time now, and it always seemed to point into walls. You would think someone could invent a magic that could take physical barriers into account.

  The Claw stepped up to the wall and pounded on it with his palm. “Lazy wizards,” he grumbled. The wall was completely solid.

  He scanned the bricks from ceiling to floor. There were deep scratch marks in several locations, as if something tried to dig its way out of this room. But there were no secret passages or hidden doors that the princess might be hiding behind.

  Then something caught his eyes. Bending down, he pushed aside some of the spider guts and lifted a silvery chain with a pair of interlocking circles dangling from the end—the locket he had given to Princess Mariko. The compass had taken him right to it.

  “Damn!” The Claw shouted, kicking the wall. His words echoed through the chamber.

  Finding the princess just became a whole lot tougher.

  He had a way in. He had a way to find the locket. But that was all. He was out of tricks, and time was not on his side.

  The edge of a sharp dagger pressed up against his neck. “That’ll be enough shouting,” said a woman’s deep voice. “Put your hands out where I can see them.”

  The Claw straightened up and did as he was told.

  “Well now,” said the woman. “It’s not every day that you see something like that, now do you?” She slapped one of his bladed gauntlets with a second dagger. “Must be kind of rough, you know, if you need to scratch your eye or something.”

  The Claw nodded. “I was just thinking that myself.”

  “Were you now?” The woman started frisking him, feeling around his waist, his calves, and near his boots, but keeping her other blade firmly against his neck.

  The Claw started to nod yes, but the sharp edge of the dagger bit into him. He could feel the sting as the metal separated his skin, and he decided it was better to hold still.

  “That’s a good boy,” she said, clearly noticing his discomfort. “No moving till I say so.”

  The Claw let her continue her search. In the pouch on his belt she found the compass that had led him to the locket, three small healing potions, and two flasks of alchemist’s fire.

  “You’re pretty well armed,” she said. “You weren’t sent here as a prisoner, were you?”

  “No,” replied the Claw, trying his best to not move his throat much.

  “Judging by the make of your clothes and the magic on them blades, I’d say you work for someone with a lot of coin. Perhaps even the king himself.”

  “Impressive,” said the Claw. Whoever this person was, she reminded him of Princess Mariko—smart, sharp tongued, and dangerous.

  She stopped her search and placed her second blade on his neck. “Now listen real good,” she said, whispering in his ear. “I’m gonna release you. And you’re gonna turn around. But before you get any bright ideas about sticking me with those pointy gloves of yours, just know this—I can cut off your manhood from thirty paces with just one of these.” She wiggled her daggers on his neck. “If you want to know what I can do with two, just use your imagination.”

  The blades slipped away from his neck, and he could feel her step away. She didn’t make any noise as she moved.

  “Turn around,” she said, “and keep your back to the wall.”

  Doing as he was told, the Claw turned around and finally got a look at the woman who had held him at knifepoint. She was tall, almost as tall as him, with ragged blonde hair. Her slim half-elf build was accentuated by a suit of black leather armor, fitted tight against her frame by a series of straps and buckles. Her outfit would have been quite impressive, had it not been worn thin at the knees, elbows, and neck, and its snapped buckles retied with bits of leather. Tattered sleeves and torn seams on a woman this capable could mean only one thing: she’d been down here for quite some time.

  The half-elf stood in front of the destroyed spiders, one dagger pointed at him, the other poised above her shoulder, ready to throw. She looked him over, sizing him up, but every few moments she would look behind her, scanning the room, like a burglar watching for guards.

  “Well now,” said the Claw, “it’s not every day you see something like that.” He indicated the intricate strap and buckle system on her suit of armor. “Now do you?”

  She looked down at herself and chuckled. “No,” she said. “I suppose you don’t.”

  “Must be kind of rough,” he said, breaking a smile. “You know, taking it off and whatnot.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, an evil smile on her face. “Just because you’re the first man I’ve laid eyes on in half a year doesn’t mean I’m going to rush into your arms as soon as you look at me all sideways.”

  The Claw blushed under his mask. He hadn’t meant that the way it sounded.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Evelyne,” she said. She looked him over once again. “And what do they call you?”

  “They call me the Claw.”

  “The Claw? Well, that’s catchy. So listen, Claw, now that we’re all friendly, why don’t you go ahead and take off that mask of yours, so I can see your face?”

  “Why would you want me to do that? You don’t know me.”

  Evelyne smiled. “But of course I do. You’re the Claw. King Korox’s personal assassin.”

  “Well, you have me at a disadvantage then. Since all I know about you is your name.”

  “Oh, you’re at an even bigger disadvantage than that. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve got you at knife point. And even better, I know my way around, and I’ll bet both my blades that you don’t have a single solitary notion about where you are right now.”

  He nodded. “You got me there,” he said. “So now what?”

  “Now you take off your mask, so I can see your face. Or we go back to where we were, and I kill you.” She cocked her arm even farther, getting ready to throw her blade.

  “Wait. Wait.” The Claw dropped into a crouch, ready to defend himself. “I’ve caused you no harm. You don’t want to kill me.”

  She took a step closer. “A girl can tell a lot about a man by looking at his face. So I want to see it now, if I’m going to parley with you. If not, you can die.”

  “You’re making a mistake—”

  His words were cut short by a tremendous hiss. Then the room erupted in sound as a pair of nearby pillars were torn from the floor and ceiling and hurled across the chamber. Three greenish tentacles appeared from behind the pile of spider muck. Each was capped with the head of a serpent or drake—long slithery tongues and mouths full of teeth. They sniffed at the air, focusing in on Evelyne with their white eyes.

  Beside the heads, three more tentacles appeared. Thick and round, they had the suction cups of an octopus on one side, and the scales of a snake on the other. They tapered to a point, and one of them held in its grasp a shattered piece of stone, wielding it like a club. The other two stretched out, reaching over twenty feet, to grab hold of another pillar with their soft suction cups. They contracted, pulling into view the creature’s rubbery sphere of a body.

  The beast’s round, gray-brown mass must have been at least twice the height of a man. A dozen smallish stalks protruded from the creature’s surface—clear white eyes attached to the ends. It held itself suspended over the floor with just the two large tentacles wrapped around the pillars. The other tentacle and the three heads converged on Evelyne, surrounding her from all sides.

  “Get back!” she shouted, waving her daggers at the snapping, hissing heads. “You know I don’t taste good.”

  The tentacles came at her, all at the same time. She managed to bat one away, and slice another, but the other two were too strong, and Evelyne became quickly overwhelmed. A hissing serpent head clamped onto each arm, biting down and immobilizing her.

  The Claw sprang into action, tumbling into the center of the fight and raking his blades
down the entire length of one tentacle. A single long slice of flesh fell from the creature’s body, the suction cups making a slight squish as they hit the floor.

  The head attached to that tentacle hissed and reeled back, releasing Evelyne from its grip.

  The Claw ran to the other side. Jabbing out with his fists, he pierced the snakelike hide and jammed his blades deep into the tentacle. The creature let out another hiss and pulled back, letting go of the half-elf’s other arm, but yanking the Claw off his feet—his gauntlet jammed deep inside the beast’s body.

  The Claw was dragged across the filth-strewn floor, reddish-brown guts flying everywhere, as he tried to pull himself free. The creature flailed, its hissing turning into more of an angry screech as it flung him side to side, trying in vain to dislodge the bladed human. It smashed him into the ruined half bodies of the giant spiders, sending them rolling and wobbling across the uneven paving stones, leaving a trail of gore behind.

  The creature slammed the Claw against the wall—upside down. Pulling himself over, he kicked his feet into the air, bracing them against the solid stone. With all of his might, he yanked down on his blades, using the wall as leverage. His razor-sharp gauntlets slipped through the flesh and came out the other side, and the Claw fell to the floor, finally free.

  The round, rubbery abomination pulled back. Its tentacle was almost completely severed in two. Wrapping it against its body, the head hissed in the Claw’s direction. Then the entire beast convulsed, its round core expanding and contracting in an undulating motion. Its eyes, protruding from its body on narrow stalks, darted this way and that, scanning the entire room.

  Lowering its body close to the floor, it seemed to strain its muscles, as if laboring with something difficult. The pillars it held between two powerful tentacles cracked under the pressure, sending stone and dust tinkling to the floor. With one final push, the creature opened its backside and deposited a huge, silvery-white sack on the ground. Then the beast retreated, gripping the pillars with its tentacles and pulling itself through the room.

  Ooze dripped from the side of the sack, and it began to move. Something inside poked at its edges, making strange shapes in the stretchy, elastic sides of its cocoon. Then a hole appeared, and a pair of long thin tendrils slipped out, forcing the opening to widen. Two more tendrils, then four more after that, groped their way out as the sack was turned inside out and a large spider appeared.

  Maybe half as big as the smashed vermin whose guts were now caked on the flagstones of the chamber, this new spider had silvery legs that ended in bladed tips—natural swords attached to each of its eight spindly legs.

  Evelyne dashed past him, grabbing his shoulder. “This way!”

  Rolling back to his feet, the Claw followed. He didn’t need to be told twice.

  Evelyne led him deeper into the room, hugging the wall. The tentacled creature was on the other side of the chamber. The Claw could see it through the pillars as they ran. Its body opened to deposit a second silvery sack on the ground.

  Behind them, the spider’s legs tapped out a rhythm of sharp clicking sounds as they scampered across the floor. Evelyne dashed ahead at full bore, her arms pumping. She was quick, so was the Claw, but the spider with its eight legs was faster, and it gained ground.

  They reached the corner of the room, the spider bearing down on them. It was dark here, darker than the rest of the room. Even the purple glow from the ceiling didn’t reach into the recesses of this chamber. Evelyne gave a quick look over her shoulder, then dived head first into the darkness.

  The Claw was startled. What sort of magic was this? She’d led him into the farthest corner and disappeared, trapping him behind a spider and a spider-making monster. Slowing his pace, he steeled himself for a tough fight.

  If he ever found this Evelyne again, she was going to be very sorry she—

  “Don’t stop! Just jump.” Evelyne’s voice came out of the darkness, coaxing him on. It sounded hollow, almost echoed, as if she were inside a well. “Hurry!”

  The spider was nearly on him. It ran with six legs, swiping its front two out trying to corral him. Not having much choice, the Claw leaped into the dark corner, the spider’s limbs nearly on his back.

  Flying through the air, he braced for impact, half expecting that he’d knock himself cold running full speed into a brick wall. But instead, he slipped right through. A large chunk of the wall was missing here in the corner. The absent piece was broken in such a way that it was covered perfectly by the shadows.

  Jumping from the solid stone into dark nothingness was tremendously disorienting, and the Claw opened his palm, trying to see where he was before he impaled himself on a piece of stone—or worse, another spider.

  He fell for a moment longer, then his magical light revealed the dirt floor. It came up fast, and he crashed to the ground with a tremendous thud.

  “Not very sturdy there, are you?” said Evelyne, helping him to his feet.

  “You might not think that,” he replied.

  “That wasn’t bad fighting back there,” she said, with a wink. “Maybe I won’t kill you just yet.”

  “Thanks,” said the Claw. “I appreciate that.”

  They were inside what amounted to a large hole in the brick wall. The floor was big enough for four or five men to stand around comfortably without bumping into each other much. The crack they had jumped through was up high in the wall, maybe twice his height from the floor. He could just make out the faintest bit of purple glow, rimming the broken stone above him.

  As he looked on, the spider’s legs shot through the opening, probing the air and the stone.

  “Are we trapped in here?” asked the Claw.

  “No. There’s a passage,” she replied, taking him by the arm. “It’s small, and we’ll have to crawl, but it’ll lead us out of here.”

  “What about the spider? Holes in walls seem like the last place we want to fight one of those things.”

  “It won’t leave that room. It’s bound to the deepspawn that created it.”

  The Claw looked up at the spider. So far it wasn’t making any real attempt to follow them, only waiting at the opening.

  “So that thing’s called a deepspawn?” he asked.

  “No,” replied Evelyne, dragging him toward the crawlspace. “It’s called Clusterfang.”

  “A deepspawn with a name.” He was shoved toward an opening in the wall, down near the floor. “I can’t wait to hear this story.” Dropping to his knees, he held his palm out and followed the light into the darkness.

  chapter nineteen

  Everything shook. Only slightly, but it shook all the same. The walls hummed with power. The floor swayed like the deck of a ship on a gentle sea. The chandeliers, decorative reminders of a time long past, swayed gently, constantly.

  Resting his bone-thin arm on the chiseled obsidian throne, Arch Magus Xeries twirled the stem of his wine goblet between his fingers. He watched the red liquid inside swirl. Its surface trembled, never smooth, shifting like everything else.

  On the dais in front of him, an image fluttered—Erlkazar, the plains of Llorbauth. His pets gathered below, waiting. And they would continue to wait, just as he would.

  He had not been patient as a younger man. He had, in fact, hated waiting for anything. In truth, he didn’t much like it now. But as an immortal, waiting had become a simple fact of life.

  He had grown better at it, through practice. He had had a lot of practice waiting, though he wasn’t as rash and reactive as he had been long ago. There was a limit to all of his learned patience.

  Xeries was approaching that limit now.

  “Do you remember our first ride through the countryside here?” he asked, not taking his eyes off of his wine.

  “I’ve … never been here before,” replied a weak, shaky woman’s voice.

  Xeries turned his attention to his left, where his wife, his queen, sat. Their thrones were carved from the same piece of obsidian, chiseled from the same huge pi
ece of stone as the floor itself. They were attached to each other and to the floor. And when Xeries and his queen sat in their thrones, they could feel the vibrations of the entire citadel, amplified above all other places.

  “I know you haven’t,” he said to his wife, his voice echoing as it always did. “I wasn’t speaking to you.”

  “Oh,” she said. She wore a long, black veil that covered her face and shoulders. When seated, its hem collected in her lap.

  “This was my home, long ago,” he said, looking down on the image at his feet. “Well, a piece of it anyway. As a young man.”

  “Is that why we are here?” she asked. She wheezed a little as she spoke these words.

  “In part,” he said. “I need something they have. Something to help me.”

  His wife’s voice grew cold. “Something to maintain your immortality, you mean.”

  Xeries stood, his knees popping and creaking as he did. He shuffled down from the dais. His body was bent from age, and he sported the wicked marks and deformations of a man who had dabbled with powers well beyond his control.

  “Have you not lived a good life?” he asked. “Have you not been given everything your heart desires?”

  “You have shown me places and given me baubles,” she replied. “But you have taken more than your fair share in return.”

  “I have loved you more than I have loved any of my other wives. Does that not please you?”

  “That is not true.” She spoke these words so forcefully that it caused her to cough. She struggled for air with long, gasping breaths. When her lungs were clear, she continued. “What you call love is merely a memory. The memory of your first wife. I have been little more than a replacement. And not even that. I have been a means to an end for you.”

  Xeries picked up a glass bottle and filled his goblet fuller. He had servants who would do this for him, but there was something enjoyable about pouring his own wine—something left over from the days when his first wife was alive.