Skull Gate

by Robin W Bailey

  She loomed over him, wanting with all her heart and soul to smash him, to pound him into the stone, to sink her fingers in his soft throat, to rip out his black heart and squeeze it in her hands until it beat no more. But she had seen his power, knew what he could do. It would not help Aki to get blasted to ashes now. She had to wait, bide her time, then find a way to help the child.

  Onokratos got his feet shakily under him. “She's no better or worse off than my daughter,” he said. “Only I can't let this one run free in my house. They would fight like the animals they've become."

  Frost struggled to quell her temper. “Why not lock them both up?"

  He sneered, a startling change from his usual passivity. “Kalynda is my child, my flesh and blood,” he said. “Should I lock her up in her own home, or this one”—he jerked a thumb at the cell door—“who is nothing to me, nothing but a pawn?"

  She almost hit him again. Such callousness toward any child filled her with loathing. Later, she would make this man pay dearly for his cruelty. Now, she bit her lip and kept her tongue under tight check.

  Abruptly, he turned and led the long way back up the stairs. The stench was left behind; the animal noises faded. Her heart cried out not to leave the young queen, but reason told her there was little she could do without careful consideration. She had already encountered Kalynda; Aki seemed every bit as savage, as feral.

  “Isn't there some danger that your daughter will attack us if she's free to roam the manor?"

  The old man shook his head. “I am protected,” he answered. “But because you and your friends are my guests, I've confined her activities to the western wing of the manor. She won't hurt you."

  Rather, I was concerned with hurting her, Frost thought. Aki is my charge. Your daughter means no more to me.

  Finally, they arrived back at the room where she had awakened. Onokratos extinguished the stubs of their candles. The other candles still burned, but the rich light did nothing to drive the chill from her bones. That would take much time, she figured, as long as her mind retained an image of Aki gnawing that rat.

  She strode to the bare bed frame but was too agitated to sit or lie down. She paced back and forth, arms folded, head lowered as she thought. Onokratos watched, sitting on the edge of his table. She could feel his eyes upon her. On his lap he cradled the book he had been reading earlier.

  “What happened?” she demanded when it was clear he would offer no explanation.

  “Kalynda was playing and fell—"

  Frost waved a hand impatiently. “I mean, what happened to Aki? Your daughter's problems are not mine."

  He set the book aside, regarded her evenly. “One story requires the telling of the other."

  She glowered, then drew a deep breath, forced herself to sit on the old bed frame. When she was as comfortable as she thought herself likely to become, she nodded and waited for him to continue.

  “We are not Korkyrans, Kalynda and I."

  Frost sighed. The old man was determined to weave a tale when she only wanted facts. She knew by his accent he was not of Tras Sur'tian's people.

  “Keled-Zaram is our home, far to the east."

  “I know the land,” she informed him, hoping it would speed him up.

  “When Kalynda's mother died I could no longer bear to live there. Every tree, every hill reminded me of her. The birds and smallest squirrels reminded me of her. I saw her face in every cloud. So, I sold my small business, took my daughter, and began to wander. Kalynda had seemed like a miracle to me, born in the lateness of my years and of her mother's. We had been childless through our long years and long since resigned ourselves to barrenness until her birth. She was our gift from the gods.” His eyes misted over and took on a faraway look. “And, even with her mother gone, that gift was no less precious. I knew we couldn't wander forever, an old man and a little girl. Kalynda needed a home and stability. In time, my grief lessened and the needs of my child became paramount. When we found this old abandoned manor, it seemed like yet another godsend. I thought that with only a little honest sweat we might once again breathe life into its fallow fields and make a new life for ourselves here. But, we had been here less than the full cycle of one moon when Kalynda—” Onokratos choked suddenly, unable to get his words out. His whole body sagged. He swallowed hard. Two tears rolled thickly down his face. “She was playing in the fields. There was an old well we knew nothing of, and she fell in."

  Frost leaned forward, finding herself interested in the tale despite her impatience. “Was it some injury to her head that made her mad?"

  “A moment,” he begged, holding up a hand to end her questions. “This is very hard for a father."

  She regarded him with considerable frustration. She had come to confront an evil man, another Thogrin Sin'tell, when she'd begun her quest for Aki's captor. She thought she had found him in the heartless creature that had dispassionately caused her charge's fearful condition.

  And yet this man's pain was obvious, his concern for his daughter genuine. Men did strange things, she knew, for love of family. Did her own family history not illustrate that fact? Suddenly, she wanted very much to hear all of Onokratos's story.

  “It was not such a deep well,” he began slowly, “and there was no water. The fall did not hurt her, but...” He shook all over and clutched himself as if to calm his quivering flesh. “There were spiders, so many fat, blood-sucking, chaos-spawned spiders!"

  A cold hand gripped her heart, and she remembered the old man's unsettling, violent reaction to the unlucky web dweller her light had chanced to fall upon in the corridor. She had no love for the horrid things, either. As a small child they had terrified her; as an adult she had learned to live with that fear. Still, the fear remained, lurking in some shadowed corner of her mind.

  Onokratos's face streamed with tears, and he wiped a sleeve over his eyes. “They stung her, not once, but many times, until she was swollen and paralyzed with their poison.” He paused again and sobbed like a lost child; great shudders racked his aged frame. “She screamed, but the well was far from the manor, and my joints are old. By the time I got to her there was little I could do."

  Frost caught her breath. “Are you saying the poison drove her mad?"

  His head snapped up. His face contorted with rage and contempt. “Ignorant Esgarian whore! I'm trying to tell you she died! She died!"

  Frost leaped up, crossed the room in three strides, and seized the front of his robe. A finger's breadth separated their noses as she shouted at him. “She lives, you shriveled old vulture! I've seen her myself. Look where I bear her scratches!” She stabbed a finger at the wound on her cheek. It was scabbed, still sore. “What game are you playing with me that requires such lies?"

  He knocked her arms away and rose, stumbling back. “She died, I tell you! But I prayed to Gath, chaos master and lord of spiders, to give her back to me. I prayed to that monster for the soul of my beloved, my dearest Kalynda!"

  She froze even as she reached for him. “The spider god?” She would not believe that anyone, no matter how desperate, would dare to invoke that forbidden deity. What utter, terrible foolishness! Gath was chaos itself, and all the universe was no more than a fly in his subtle web. Not even the other gods, though their strength equaled his, held converse with him.

  “For Kalynda, yes!” His fist smashed down on the wooden table as he worked his way around it, putting it between them. It was the first indication he'd given that he held any fear of her at all. “I dared even that to gain her back!” Then his anger deserted him; his gaze sought hers. “But that treacherous god betrayed me,” he confessed, his voice suddenly bleak with despair.

  Her rage had not subsided. It boiled within her. “You fool! What did you expect? That such a power would deal fairly with you?"

  He turned his back to her, unable to meet her accusing gaze. “I bargained with him in good faith! I wanted only to see my Kalynda play and laugh and sing again, to see her happy! I needed to hold her in my
arms as she slept at night, to hear her sweet voice, to have her bring me flowers still kissed with morning dew as she used to.” His tears rushed forth again, dripped to the table, splashed on the book.

  “Gath answered your prayer, didn't he?” Calming herself, she urged him to continue with his story. “But not as you expected."

  He shook his head. “Not immediately,” he answered. “First, there was a price to be paid."

  She nodded, barely whispered. “When you deal with gods there is always a price."

  He told her of a dream that came to him the night Kalynda died. The chaos lord, night's master, the thousand-named, appeared and spoke to him. Dark and awesome in his terrible beauty, his voice was the voice of the earth and air, a rumble and a murmur both at once. The ransom of Kalynda's life would only be a small price: one pure and uncorrupted soul to take his daughter's place, not in the land of the dead, but in the abyss of chaos that was Gath's realm. If such a soul was offered, Kalynda might again walk the earth again at her father's side. So promised the spider god in his most seductively silken manner. Then the dream melted into the more common nightmares of mortal sleep.

  “But it was a true vision,” Onokratos insisted, “a visitation from the leveler of all."

  To meet Gath's price, though, he needed more than the simple acumen his life as a small businessman had required of him. He needed the special knowledge that only a few special books contained, that only a select few individuals could teach him. He resumed his travels alone, sought out the wise elders of the villages for miles around. Some saw through the lies he told to gain such knowledge and turned him away. Others not so perceptive embraced him as a student, taught him the secrets of Element and Ether. He learned fast, always leaving his teachers and moving on when they could teach him no more. Yet, every night he took a few moments to stare toward Korkyra and to remember Kalynda.

  Years passed. Onokratos sought out ancient libraries and rare books in all the civilized nations, learning mysteries, vile esotery. Even he knew that his soul hovered on the brink of damnation.

  “Who's to say if I went too far?” He paused, looked thoughtfully at Frost, and sighed. “I both laughed and cried when, after all my wanderings and studies, I learned of a large private library not all that far from this very manor in nearby Endymia.” He shrugged as he wiped his eyes yet again. “I'd heard of Thogrin Sin'tell, of course. I knew he was related to the royal family. But of his collection I knew nothing."

  So Onokratos journeyed to Endymia, to Thogrin's castle, and presented himself as a common prestidigitator, an entertainer. Thogrin Sin'tell lived alone with only his retainers for companionship. Any new diversion was welcome, and the baron invited Onokratos to stay awhile as a guest. As the days went by it proved easy to win the nobleman's friendship, an accomplishment made easier with a few simple, subtle spells.

  Though the library was impressive, it offered none of the knowledge Onokratos thirsted for. Still, the trip was not wasted. It was Thogrin who opened his eyes, and convinced him that the purest, most uncorrupted soul in the kingdom must belong to Korkyra's young queen. Did a monarch not rule by divine right? And would not a spark of godly divinity burn in Aki's soul because she ruled? It couldn't be coincidence that Aki and Kalynda were the same age, born in the same year and month. She must be Gath's intended ransom. It was so plain.

  “We made our plans, Thogrin Sin'tell and I. Oh, he was a great schemer. On the first night of the Homed Moon, with Thogrin's help, I raised the demon, Gel, and commanded him to steal the little queen.” He looked up and their eyes locked. His grief was gone, and his anger. A hard calmness shone in his unwavering gaze. “When Aki was ours, I brought her to this manor, to this place where Kalynda lay entombed. Wasting not a moment, I called the thousand-named, and he came and ripped the spirit from Aki's living body, leaving only the husk, the shell, the animal essence."

  Frost was wrong. Grief had not yet left Onokratos. She felt the saw-edge of his pain. Indeed, she perceived that he had chosen his words and flung them at her with blunt force to shock her, to make her feel like pain.

  And she did hurt. The knowledge stabbed her to the heart, that Aki's soul writhed in the cold grasp of the chaos lord. Again, she wanted to lash out and smash the frail figure hunched before her, no matter his age. He was to blame; the fault was his, Aki's bestial ravings still echoed in the dark corners of her mind, the smells of the little queen's prison filled her nostrils.

  Her breath hissed through clenched teeth. “And in return for your efforts you won, not your true daughter, but another animal.” She sneered. “Again I call you a fool! The dark deceiver kept his promise exactly as he spoke it in your dream. Kalynda walks the earth again! But it's only the soulless flesh. Gath still possesses her spirit. And without the soul the flesh exists only on its primal instincts. Now she and Aki are two alike: human in shape only."

  “Gath betrayed me!” he shouted furiously.

  “Stupid old man!” Her temper exploded. She slammed fists against the table between them; then, seizing its edge, she flung it aside, grabbed his lapels, slapped him twice rapidly, and propelled him forcefully into his chair so that it nearly toppled backward. “You think the gods are common alley merchants that you can bargain with, coin for goods, in equal value? You pitiful pawn! They move us about for amusement like pieces in the Game of Kings, at whim or fancy.” She spat at his feet. “You flattered yourself you were a player when you were never more than a piece on the gameboard."

  His face reddened where her blows had stung. He clenched his fists, the veins stood out on his hands, throbbed on his temples. “You don't know so much as you think, spiteful witch!” He jumped up, went to a shelf in a corner, and lifted a bundle. In better light she saw that he held a bedroll.

  He flung it at her feet. “Spare me your arrogant displays! You don't even know the company you keep! Look to yourself before you play haughty with me or call me fool!” He pointed accusingly. “Look at it, if you dare!"

  She touched the bundle with a booted toe. She recognized it now as Kimon's bedroll. The blanket had a distinctively embroidered border she couldn't mistake. She looked at her host again as suspicion ate wormholes in her sudden resolution. Was he trying to trick her? His eyes burned with a queer, furious light as he drew himself stiffly erect and pointed again at the bundle.

  Cautiously, she bent and untied the thin leather thongs that bound it at either end. She could feel something hidden in the cloth as she worked. Something hard, long, and flat. She unrolled the blanket, and the candle fire glittered on a beautifully crafted blade, a fine short sword.

  “He's been right at your side,” Onokratos taunted. He barked a harsh laugh. “No doubt waiting for another chance to murder your precious child-queen."

  Her jaw dropped. The assassin she'd fought in Aki's chamber had used such a weapon. Only Onokratos was mistaken. It wasn't Aki he'd come to kill!

  “Liar!” she shouted. Her senses reeled. She'd given her body to Kimon, her trust, maybe her love. He'd had a dozen opportunities to slay her if he was the assassin. “Not Kimon!"

  He loomed over her, merciless, as she kneeled over the blade. “Yes, Kimon!” He shook his fists. “I took that from his horse myself, and other tools of his despicable trade.” He touched his temples. “Why, if you had any sensitivity at all, you could just touch that steel and hear the screams of all the murders that have been done with it.” He glared, eyes burning with the light of reflected flames. “Your Kimon was hired to murder a child, your charge, and you've led him right to her. How dare you scorn me for trying to save my daughter? Look to yourself!"

  She picked up the sword, ran a finger along its keen edge. If she was still the witch he called her, she might sense just what he claimed, know the weapon's history just be holding it, know the truth. But she had no power, now, and the sword was silent in her hand. She had only the old man's word.

  “Liar!” she hissed. Onokratos only grinned. “Liar!” she screamed again, rising. He ba
cked away, but the grin remained, twisted, erupted into mocking laughter. Her grip tightened on the hilt until her knuckles turned white and bloodless. She struggled for control even as she raised the blade. “I don't believe you! I won't!” She smashed the sword down, taking a slice from the lip of the overturned table. He could stop her; he had the power. She didn't care. She raised the sword again and advanced.

  But the blade caught the candles’ gleaming, and in its bright flash, she suddenly recalled in detail both exquisite and agonizing, that night in Mirashai when she had seen it do that before. It had flashed in a beam of moonlight, and she had followed its wielder into darkness away from Aki's side. Frost hesitated and stared at the weapon in her hand. Could she desert Aki again by risking herself in intemperate battle with this wizard? Gods of Esgaria, what could she do?

  “Get out!” she raged. She turned the cold point of the blade from his heart and thrust it at the door instead. “Get out, or I'll kill you, I swear! Leave me alone!"

  He puffed himself up, tensed as if he might respond to her challenge. Then a cruel smile split his face, and he moved toward the threshold, never taking his eyes from her. “All right,” he agreed, his voice under control again. “We both can use a rest and some time to think.” He indicated the wooden bed frame. “That's as comfortable as anything I can offer. I'll wake you in the morning.” He took one of the several candles, then closed the door gently as he left her.

  She ran to it, jerked it open, fearing he might have locked her in. Already he was some distance down the corridor, holding his small light like a shield against the gloom. He turned into a branching passage and was gone. She slammed the door.

  A low shudder began at the center of her being and spread through her. Her hands trembled. She bit her lip to still her chattering teeth. Yet it was not fear alone that caused the trembling, but anger, frustration, indecision.

  Her gaze fell on the shining length of steel that blossomed from her fist.

  Kimon had appeared from the shadows and saved her a nasty clubbing in Shadamas. He'd fought beside her to rescue Oona. He'd stayed with her afterward, rode hard, shared food. Why should she believe Onokratos, a monster who'd damned an innocent child like Aki to an unthinkable fate?