“No,” she said, rising, “please stay. The words are dancing in front of my eyes. I need a break, and I’d love some wine.” She picked up the earthenware cups the monks had provided to go with her pitcher of water. “These will do for goblets.”
He extracted the cork, then poured. His hand shook a little, and he nearly slopped wine over her fingers.
The wine was good, sweet, but not overly so. The problem was that Dorn couldn’t guzzle it without pause, and between sips, the silence ached, demanding someone fill it. He was surprised Kara didn’t. As a bard, she had a knack for small talk that he so sorely lacked, but she seemed to be waiting for him to take the lead.
“I think the drakes will attack tomorrow,” he managed eventually.
“Can we hold them?” she asked.
“I have a surprise planned for them at the next bottleneck. But if they don’t break through the first time, they will eventually. They’re going to shove us down into the cellars pretty soon.”
“And I’ve found nothing yet. Or maybe I’ve already read the right book, and didn’t realize what I had. Arcane texts are often subtle. They speak in parable and metaphor, and I feel so stupid with frenzy nibbling at my mind.”
“Your mind is fine, and you’ve got the other scholars in the stronghold to help you. You’ll find it.”
He lifted his human hand to touch her face, then hesitated.
But before he could pull back, she took his fingers in her own and said, “I appreciate your faith.”
“Of course I have faith in you,” he said. “In fact, for a while now … it’s likely foolish of me to tell you. But according to Raryn, I’m a fool if I don’t, and if one of us had died down in the caves, without me ever having said it … well, maybe that would have been bad.”
“You’re such a brave man. Why does it frighten you so to declare your feelings, even when you already know mine?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, perhaps it doesn’t matter. But I have another question: It no longer bothers you that I’m a dragon?”
“No.” He hoped it was true. He wanted it to be.
“Then let’s not waste any more time,” she said, and opened her arms to him.
Her kisses tasted of the blueberry wine, and he marveled at how they could be so urgent and tender at the same time, and at how many she gave and how she savored them. None of the whores who’d rented him their charms had prolonged the initial phase of coupling in so sweetly tantalizing a way. It made him realize that, in fact, he knew nothing of actual lovemaking. The gift Kara offered would be nothing like the brutish rutting he’d known before. It would be the ecstasy celebrated in a thousand songs, which, until that moment, he’d never understood.
“Unlace my gown,” Kara whispered, her voice husky.
Fumbling, trembling, he unveiled her slim white body, and she reached to undress him. For a second, he wanted to stop her. She was as beautiful as Sune Firehair, and he, with his scars and iron parts fused to flesh, was grotesquely ugly. Yet she didn’t seem to find him so.
She knelt on the oval rug in the center of the floor and tugged on his hand to guide him down beside her. Maybe she thought the weight of his half-metal body would break the cot, or perhaps she wanted more room. Either way, it was fine. Lightheaded, he simply wanted to go on touching her, and for her to continue touching him.
Apparently it still wasn’t time for the final joining. She gently pushed him down on his back, kissed his lips, then started working her way down the human half of his chest. He gasped and shivered at the pleasure of it.
Until he felt her teeth.
It surprised him, because she hadn’t done anything the slightest bit painful before. But some of the harlots had given him love bites, and Kara apparently relished the same practice. Unwilling to say or do anything to diminish her pleasure, he tried his best to enjoy the sensation even as she bit him harder and harder.
When she plunged her teeth deep into the flesh of his belly, the pain of it stabbed through him.
“No,” he said. “You’re hurting me!”
He took hold of her head and tried to lift it away from his body.
Kara snarled like an animal, and resisted. She snapped at him anew, caught more flesh between her teeth, and jerked her head back and forth as if trying to tear it free.
She was a dragon, however human she appeared, and she was trying to eat him alive. In a spasm of fury and loathing, he cocked back his iron fist for a punch that would shatter her skull.
But no. He hit her with the back of his human hand instead, and when she still wouldn’t let go, slapped her harder still.
She jerked her head up. Her pupils were diamond-shaped, and her bloody teeth, long and pointed. A wave of sparkling blue washed away the rosy flush in her cheeks. She scrambled up his body, reaching for his throat with nails extending into talons.
In another moment, she’d revert entirely to drake form, then tear him apart. He slammed an uppercut into her jaw.
The punch stunned her, and she collapsed on top of him. He tumbled her onto the floor, reared above her, reached for a choke hold, then saw the fight was over. The glittering blueness had left her skin. The wide amethyst eyes had round pupils.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He didn’t know how to respond.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” she said. “It was the Rage. Evidently, the … the excitement gave it an opening. Do you understand?”
“I should go.” He picked up his breeches.
He dressed facing away from her. It was easier that way, though not much.
For one moment, he hadn’t felt like a freak. He’d imagined he could partake of the same joys and comforts as ordinary folk. He supposed it had needed the boundless guile and cruelty of a dragon to rekindle hopes he’d abandoned years before, then crush them once more.
Well, he wouldn’t give Kara the chance to hurt him again. He’d keep on protecting her for the mission’s sake, but let the Black Hand take him if he spent any more time blathering with her, or listening to her songs.
He strode to the door, then, when he reached it, hesitated.
Anger had been his friend for most of his life. He’d come to cherish it as armor against the grief, pain, and loneliness that might otherwise have destroyed him. Yet, the emotion twisting inside him felt contemptible and self-indulgent, an excuse to concentrate on easing his own hurts while ignoring a comrade’s injuries.
He turned around. Kara still sat on the floor where he’d dumped her, silently weeping. The sight of it wrung his heart, and he hated himself for nearly abandoning her to her shame.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I shouldn’t have taken so long, sorting my feelings out. Why don’t you get dressed, and we’ll sit, talk, and drink the rest of the wine.”
They did, and when the bottle and the well of conversation alike ran dry, they simply held hands. Raryn found them thus when he came to tell them Chatulio had disappeared.
Thrashing and writhing, Sammaster’s guardian creatures spilled from rents in the empty air. In that first instant, with only the single enchanted torch providing light, Pavel had difficulty discerning what manner of abomination they were, but then his mind made sense of them despite the gloom and their nauseating, bewildering lack of stability and symmetry.
Each was as tall as an ogre but bulkier. They looked as if a god had shaped several chromatic dragons out of mud, then, disliking his handiwork, squashed the separate figures into one lump. Their bodies were a patchwork of black, white, azure, green, and scarlet scales, with several misshapen reptilian heads protruding from the squirming central mass. They had no limbs as such, but extending and retracting, hardening and softening, their flesh, where it made contact with the floor, heaved them across the stones.
Such horrors were called squamous spewers. Having identified them, Pavel also had a good idea of what was about to happen, but not enough time to shout a warning.
>
One spewer roared, a thunderous sound that shook the underground chamber and made a couple of the long-armed, short-legged ogres bolt in terror. The other guardian opened the jaws of its various heads, and an eye-stinging stink suffused the air. The creature spat jets of acid, and giant-kin screamed, their warty hides sizzling and smoking.
Chanting and brandishing his sun amulet, Pavel conjured into being a floating mace of crimson light. The weapon flew at a spewer and hammered it.
Will spun his warsling and let fly. The skiprock cracked against one malformed head, then rebounded to strike another.
Yagoth charged and drove the point of his spear deep into the same creature’s rippling, amorphous form.
“Fight, curse you!” the ogre shaman bellowed.
The remaining ogres shouted their war cries, a clamor as fearsome as a spewer’s roar, and surged forward. Pavel conjured a second flying mace to fight alongside the first, ripped a spewer’s hide with a shrill whine of magical sound, then evoked a flash of golden light intended to sear a portion of the creature’s strength away.
But whatever he and his allies attempted, the spewers didn’t falter. Their snapping fangs inflicted ghastly wounds, but the real terror came when, every few seconds, one of them left off biting to spit a breath weapon from its mouths.
Pavel abruptly glimpsed brightness at the corner of his vision. He tried to fling himself aside, but the plume of flame brushed him even so. The hot pain threw him to his knees.
His body wanted to lie still, recover from the shock, but in a battle, such inertia could be fatal. He forced himself to raise his head and peer about, then gasped in dismay.
The same blast of fire that had burned him had felled several ogres. The spewer responsible crawled forward on its seething, semi-liquid base, jaws gaping to tear the life from the helpless giant-kin.
Will sprang between the creature and its intended victims. His curved hornblade slashed back and forth, splitting the creature’s hide. It snapped at him, three heads striking at almost the same instant, and he dodged frantically.
“Help me, charlatan!” he cried.
Pavel scrambled forward, rattled off a prayer of healing, and his hand glowed red. He pressed it against the grimy, mole-studded, sour-smelling flesh of one of the fallen ogres, and the creature groaned and stirred.
“Get back in the fight!” Pavel told it.
He scuttled on to heal a second one, wasting precious moments before realizing the creature wasn’t just incapacitated but dead. He prayed over a third, a female, and waking, she cringed and threw her forearm over her eyes, as if the spewer’s fiery breath was even then leaping at her.
The ogres Pavel had healed started picking themselves up. He darted forward to stand beside Will and drove in, striking with his mace, and jerking himself out of the paths of the gnashing fangs that leaped at him from every angle. The spewer stretched one of its necks like dough, arching it up over his head, and Pavel never even realized it until its fangs pierced his back. He lunged forward, and though the abomination ripped away his manta ray cloak and part of his brigandine, perhaps it hadn’t savaged his shoulder too badly.
He struck the spewer another blow, and it responded by spitting jets of pearly frost. The cold pierced him to the core, and he reeled. A dragon head reached for him, and he feared he couldn’t recover his balance in time to fend it off.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to. The female ogre he’d healed rushed the spewer and chopped at its extended neck with her flint axe. The blow nearly severed the head, and at last the foul thing hesitated.
“Now!” Will shouted. “Kill it now!”
He, Pavel, and the ogres lunged in, cutting, stabbing, and bashing. The spewer collapsed, seeming not to topple so much as dissolve.
Pavel pivoted toward the remaining guardian just in time to see it spit flares of crackling lightning at Yagoth and its other opponents.
“Now that one!” the human gasped. “Let’s finish this!”
He and his allies swarmed on the spewer. After a moment, it opened its jaws, and the cleric poised himself to dodge another blast of its breath weapon. What gushed out, though, was blood. The spewer shuddered, then slumped down as its fellow had done.
Pavel sighed, relaxing, momentarily dull-witted with relief. When Yagoth yanked the spear from the spewer’s corpse, hefited it, and cocked it back, he almost failed to register the significance.
Almost, but not quite.
“Will!” he bellowed.
The halfling had his back turned, but heeding Pavel’s warning, he tried to spin away from the spot where he was standing. But the long, heavy lance was already streaking through the air, and for once, Will’s agility wasn’t enough to snatch him out of harm’s way. The spear slammed him onto the floor.
Pavel sprang toward his friend.
Snarling, crimson eye blazing, Yagoth snatched a dead ogre’s war club from the floor and swung it in a horizontal arc.
Pavel tried to duck, but was too slow. The weapon smashed into his brow, and the world went black.
As the spear hurled Will off his feet, he was already angry with himself. He’d assumed the ogres meant to betray their civilized partners eventually, yet Yagoth had still caught him by surprise. He hadn’t expected the attack to come before Pavel identified the tablets containing the ancient elven secrets, or a second after they’d all finished fighting a difficult battle together, for that matter.
Which meant Yagoth had chosen his moment well. As a former outlaw, to whom duplicity had been a way of life, Will felt a certain grudging admiration.
Mostly, though, he was terrified. He twisted his head to see if the spear had dealt him a mortal wound. No, probably not, unless he simply bled out by and by. The weapon’s broad flint head had driven so deep into his shoulder that the tip was sticking out the other side, but it hadn’t pierced his heart or lung.
It had to come out, though, and right away—before the ogres came to finish him off. He couldn’t fight or maneuver with the long, heavy lance sticking out of his body, so he gripped the shaft with both hands, feeling how little strength remained in the one below his damaged shoulder, and pulled.
Until that moment, the injury hadn’t really hurt, but then the pain jolted him. He gasped and let go of the weapon. When he jerked his hands away, the spear bobbed slightly, producing a second flare of agony.
Footsteps slapped against the floor. The ogres were closing in.
He made himself take hold of the lance once more. Gritting his teeth, he dragged on it as hard as he could. An ogre with a face so studded with warts as to leave hardly any clear space between leered at him and raised its club.
The bludgeon hurtled down and the spear pulled free at the same instant. To avoid the giant-kin’s attack, Will had to roll onto his crippled shoulder. It hurt so badly he blacked out for a moment. Yet his body must have kept moving even while his mind was absent, for when he came to his senses, he was on his feet.
Praying that Pavel was weaving some mighty ogre-slaughtering spell, he cast about for his friend. Alas, the human sprawled motionless in the pool of blood seeping from his head.
Will was on his own. His sword arm dangled uselessly, not that he was currently in possession of his hornblade anyway. Filthy with gore, the blade lay out of reach where he’d dropped it when the spear pierced him.
He realized he had no hope of killing the surviving ogres, or of getting Pavel out of there. He’d need all his skill, and the blessing of every halfling god, just to escape by himself.
The ogres advanced, trying to encircle him. He drew his dagger with his off hand and faked a lunge to the right, then darted left instead. The trick caught the giant-kin by surprise, and he slashed a hamstring as he sprang past one of his foes. The ogre fell down howling.
Will grinned, but knew that one lucky stroke meant little. Soon, his strength would start to fail. He had to be out the door before that happened. He drew a deep, steadying breath and advanced toward the ogres barrin
g the way.
A giant-kin aimed its spear to jab at him, and in that instant, Will sprang between its legs. That flummoxed his foes, and he was able to run another stride before two more ogres shambled into striking distance. He sidestepped so that one of his opponents was blocking the other, jumped above the low sweep of the greatclub that would otherwise have shattered his legs, and scrambled three steps nearer to the exit.
Yagoth snarled words of power, and magic filled the air with a carrion stink. Will’s muscles seized up. Caught in mid-stride, he pitched off balance and cracked his head against the floor.
He knew from watching Pavel cast similar spells that the paralysis was in his head. He could break free by exerting his will. Yet his struggle to do so produced only trembling.
An ogre loomed over him.
Brandobaris, help me! Will prayed.
Perhaps the Master of Stealth was listening. In any event, Will had control of his body once again. He flung himself sideways just in time to avoid the axe stroke that would have sheared off his head. The flint blade crashed and struck sparks against the floor.
Will scrambled up and on, zigzagging unpredictably, making the ogres flounder into one another’s way, using their hugeness against them. Yagoth snarled another incantation, and for an instant, Will’s stomach squirmed with nausea, and dizziness tilted the floor beneath his feet. But then the curse lost its grip on him, and a second after that, he reached the door. He plunged through and ran down the corridor.
The ogres scrambled after him. What had been a kind of deadly dance became a race, and no doubt they expected to win. Their legs, though stunted in proportion to their height, were nonetheless longer than his.
But if he could stay ahead of them for long enough, he hoped to prove them mistaken. It depended on whether they, in their fury, had forgotten about the trap protecting the hallway. If so, they’d tread on the triggers, and suffer the consequences.
The Rite Page 14
