Geas of the Black Axe (Legends of the Nameless Dwarf Book 2)

by D. P. Prior

  Rhiannon was already halfway up the steps, and Nameless was right behind her. He could hear Shader following.

  When she made the walkway, Rhiannon yelled at Gandaw and charged. Gandaw hadn’t seen her coming, but he still managed to get off a shot. Rhiannon must have predicted it, for she rolled beneath it and swung the black sword.

  A coil snapped out of Gandaw’s armor and caught her wrist, locking the sword in mid-swing. Gandaw brought his metal arm round till it was directly in Rhiannon’s face.

  Nameless saw the opening, and flung himself at Gandaw, swinging his axe for all he was worth. It struck the scarolite armor like a thunderclap—and shattered.

  “Oh, shog,” Nameless said, as Gandaw aimed his metal hand at him instead.

  Fire blasted from the palm, and there was no missing this time. On instinct, Nameless ducked into it and took the full brunt of the explosion on his great helm. There was a muffled boom, and flames flared briefly, but then fizzled out as if they’d struck water. Nameless fell like a plank, and the back of the helm clanged against the metal of the walkway.

  He tried to get straight back up, but the walkway careened in his blurred vision.

  Rhiannon’s hazy form kicked out at Gandaw. The Technocrat swung his arm back round at her, but before he could fire, Shader was there. He slammed the gladius into Gandaw’s transparent helm. The crystal cracked, and Gandaw gasped. The second blow sheared right through the metal hand, and Gandaw screamed.

  Nameless blinked until his eyes came into focus. He was stunned, and every limb, every organ felt like it had been tenderized or crushed to a pulp. But it was more from the impact with the walkway than the exploding fireball. He thanked shog for his ma’s scarolite helm. Without it, he would have been dead.

  Sparking wires thrashed from the stump of Gandaw’s wrist. Shader drew back the gladius for a thrust, but the coil holding Rhiannon reeled her in and smacked her against Gandaw’s breastplate. Another coil sprang out and wrapped around her neck, tightening, constricting, making her gasp and choke for every breath.

  Nameless struggled to rise, but it was as if he had no bones. He was sprawled in a heap, utterly flaccid, and he started to panic that he might have been paralyzed.

  Gandaw took a few steps back. His blue eyes blazed fiercely with either fear or rage, but within moments, they dulled. A halo of soft light irradiated the glass helm, and the crack Shader had made melted over until there was no sign of it.

  Gandaw raised his remaining hand. At first, Nameless thought he was surrendering to Shader, but then he saw the flashing red light on his vambrace.

  One of the silver spheres massacring the lizard-men broke off and soared to a position above Gandaw’s head. A beam of blue light shot from it and bathed Gandaw and Rhiannon, lifting them high into the air and bearing them toward the Statue of Eingana. The black sword fell from Rhiannon’s grasp, and Nameless twisted his head to track its feather-like drift all the way to the bottom.

  He heard Shader curse, and looked back. The knight started for the steps, but the other two spheres sped straight at him and unleashed searing streams of fire. He threw up the gladius, and it answered with a surge of aureate brilliance that sent the beams back on themselves. The sentroids erupted in flame and clattered and clashed against the walkways as they dropped.

  As Shader raced to the steps, a tumult of hissing and grunting had Nameless look below once more. Skeyr Magnus was back on his feet and barking commands. His scaly hide was charred and blistered, and smoke still rolled off of him. The few lizard-men that remained bounded over the edges of the walkways and escaped down the side of the mountain. Skeyr Magnus wavered for a moment, and then he clambered down, out of sight.

  “Spineless shoggers,” Nameless muttered.

  What did they hope to achieve by fleeing? He glanced up at the pendulous black sphere gyring above the Perfect Peak. They had only minutes—moments, even—before it ruptured, or exploded, or perhaps imploded to unmake everything there was; everything that had ever been.

  Lightning arced upward into the sky, illuminating the Dead Lands with its stark flash. In its wake, a purplish vortex materialized and spun along the fringe of the swamp, tearing up grotesquely distorted mangroves and flinging them far and wide.

  The silver sphere carried Gandaw and Rhiannon into the inky cloud beneath the spinning void and brought them alongside the serpent statue. Questing filaments sprouted from the Technocrat’s armor and inserted themselves all over Eingana’s petrified body.

  Prickles of pain ran beneath Nameless’s skin. Heat surged through his veins, but it was weaker this time. He twitched his fingers, but that was as much as he could manage.

  A flare of golden light drew his eyes upward. Shader’s gladius was lit up like a sunburst. It suddenly launched itself into the air, and the knight clung on with both hands.

  Gandaw looked up as Shader reached his height. Rhiannon twitched against his chest. Her face was bloodless, her lips tinged with blue.

  Light pulsed along Gandaw’s filaments, and Eingana’s fangs flared amber. Flame gushed from her maw and struck the bottom of the chamber. The mountain shook, and with a succession of tortured cracks, a fracture worked its way across the floor, until it yawned into another gaping chasm—the same chasm that had swallowed Aristodeus.

  Only, this time there was no white tower. This time, gigantic ribbons of shadow quested forth like avaricious fingers. They brushed against Nameless, tugged at him with irresistible force. He flipped onto his side, and slid inexorably toward the edge of the walkway.

  As he shot over the side, he grasped the railing and clung on. Desperate, he cast a look above, but there was no help there.

  The coils holding Rhiannon released her, and she fell. Shader let go of the gladius with one hand, and reached for her, but it was no good. She plummeted toward the rift.

  Her screams swirled away in the chaos of nebulous tentacles. Shader screamed, too, and Gandaw laughed.

  White brilliance erupted behind Nameless’s eyes, exploded through his entire body. Holding onto the railing with one hand, he lashed out with the other and snagged Rhiannon. Her hurtling weight almost dislodged him. Daggers of pain sliced through his shoulder, but he held on. The strain was unbearable. It wasn’t just Rhiannon, the momentum of her fall; it was the infernal force dragging them both down.

  Veins stood out along his biceps as he drew her closer. His grip on the railing began to uncurl. He reinforced it by wrapping his fingers over the top of his thumb—the hook grip he favored on his heaviest dead lifts back at the Ephebe. He twisted from his upper torso, pulling with everything he had.

  Little by little, he curled his forearm toward his biceps, bringing Rhiannon with it. She stretched out her free hand. She was close, tantalizingly close, but she couldn’t quite reach the rail. All Nameless could do was hold on as the wisps of blackness continued to pull them toward the floor. His hook grip held, but pain lanced through his shoulder, his elbow, his wrist. Much more of this, and his arm would rip free of its socket. But there was no shogging way he was letting go.

  A flash of gold made him glance above. Shader was still holding onto the gladius as it hovered level with Gandaw, but the tip of the sword was now aiming straight at the Technocrat.

  With a sudden surge of movement, it shot forward with Shader clinging on, legs swinging crazily, and embedded itself in the silver sphere. There was a burst of flame, a thunderous roar, and Gandaw fell. His filaments ripped free of the statue and flailed around him as they retracted into his armor. Grapnels snagged a railing and reeled him to the safety of a walkway.

  Down below, the chasm trembled and then snapped shut like the jaws of a monstrous beast.

  Instantly, the relentless tug to the bottom ceased. Still gripping Nameless’s hand, Rhiannon swung back and forth to gain momentum, then flipped herself over the railing and set off toward the steps up.

  Nameless hung on for a moment longer, then climbed back onto the walkway. He glanced around for somet
hing to use as a weapon, then simply bunched his fists and went after Rhiannon.

  As they reached the uppermost level, Gandaw turned to a console and made a series of swipes and taps on its mirror. The Statue of Eingana slowly descended toward him, the crown atop its head still ablaze with sparks that stretched into strings of fire and fed into the base of the black sphere.

  Shader’s gladius matched the statue’s descent, and the knight reached out to grab it. He cursed and snatched his hand away as if burned.

  Gandaw plucked the statue from the air.

  “Seconds to go!” he raved. “Seconds!”

  Amber light blasted from Eingana’s maw. The gladius came up to meet it with a wall of golden radiance. Where the two forces collided, a keening wail arose. At first, Nameless thought it was coming from the gladius, but then he realized there were two cries: brother and sister. Eingana and the Sword of the Archon, forced to fight, and both of them screaming.

  Above them, the black sphere ballooned and shuddered.

  The filaments reemerged from Gandaw’s armor and penetrated the statue. Instantly, it was irradiated with fire, then it blazed like a small sun. Shader was thrown back, but golden effulgence exploded from the gladius and met Eingana’s assault force for force. Flames and light burgeoned into a conflagration that consumed Shader and Gandaw but burned neither.

  It made no sense. Heat from the flaming sphere encompassing the knight and the Technocrat forced Nameless and Rhiannon back.

  “What the shog?” Rhiannon said. “We have to help him.”

  She tried stepping forward with her arm covering her face. Sweat poured off of her. Black fire surged along the blade of her sword. She took another step, then cried out and retreated. Her hair was smoldering.

  “Deadlocked,” Gandaw said to Shader from within the fiery barrier. “Stay like this, and you’ll perish in the Unweaving.” He glanced up at the black sphere shaking violently and growing denser by the second. “Let me raise the walls, shield us. Otherwise we’ll all die.”

  “Isn’t that what you want?” Shader said.

  “Not me,” Gandaw wailed. “Not me!”

  The gladius bucked in Shader’s grip.

  “Please,” Gandaw cried. “Lay down the sword!”

  “Don’t do it, laddie!” Nameless yelled. All Shader was to him now was a blur in the heat haze.

  “No, Deacon,” Rhiannon said. “Don’t stop!”

  A low drone came from the black sphere, growing in volume. The sound reverberated through Nameless’s bones, pressed on his skull, threatening to crush it.

  Seconds remaining… Only seconds.

  “You’re a holy man,” Gandaw said, barely visible through the blaze coming off the statue in his grasp. “If you can’t trust me, place your faith in your beloved Nous. Lower the sword.”

  Inch by inch, Shader brought the gladius down.

  “No!” Rhiannon cried.

  Nameless snatched the black sword from her and ducked into the conflagration, trusting the scarolite helm to absorb at least some of the heat.

  Vileness crept into his veins from where he gripped the sword. His muscles contorted into knots of pent-up violence. He felt once more the malice of the black axe, the need to kill, to slaughter, to triumph.

  The flames about him wilted in the ambit of the great helm, but there was so much pressure driving him back. He inched forward a step, then another. It was like walking into a hurricane. The black sword in his hand strained toward Gandaw. It hungered. It thirsted for his blood.

  “Fight, laddie!” Nameless yelled at Shader. “Kill him!”

  But the knight released the gladius, and it clanged to the walkway.

  Its light died instantly.

  Eingana’s attack petered out as Gandaw whirled around to the console and swiped across its mirror. With a rattling hum, the walls of the chamber began to rise, and when Gandaw made a few more passes across the mirror, they raced upward and closed the chamber tight against the Unweaving.

  The instant the ceiling snapped shut, blocking sight of the black mass that was about to end all things, Gandaw turned back in triumph—and sent a wall of amber flame straight at Shader.

  The gladius shot up of its own accord, whirling, spinning, drawing the fire into itself. A sound like a gasp came from the statue, and for a moment, Eingana’s attack faltered.

  “Finish him!” Gandaw yelled.

  The hum from beyond the apex rose to the roar of a thousand waterfalls. The walls of the chamber warped and buckled, and time seemed to stand still.

  Gandaw’s mouth opened and closed with macabre slowness.

  “Yeeeessss!” slewed from his lips in an endless stream.

  “No!” Nameless yelled. He was seething with anger that poured into him from the black sword. Ribbons of fuligin streamed from the blade, wrapped themselves around him, and lent rage to his voice. “Idiot! You’ve doomed us! Doomed us all!”

  Shader glanced Nameless’s way, uncertainty writ across his face.

  Rhiannon muttered, “Deacon.”

  The gladius stopped spinning and aligned itself, tip facing Gandaw.

  Faster than everything else in the room, as if it were immune to the new constraints on time, it shot forward.

  Gandaw cried out and ponderously raised his arms, but the sword wasn’t aiming for him.

  With a thunderous crack, it embedded itself in the heart of the statue.

  Eingana shuddered, and the glare of her eyes and fangs went out. Tendrils of golden light wrapped her in their embrace, and amber feelers of her own came out to intertwine with them. The serpent’s body began to swell. Stony scales cracked and sloughed off; long-fossilized jaws closed, and a forked tongue flicked between them.

  “No! What have you done?” Gandaw cried.

  Eingana grew and grew and grew, until her monstrous head swayed high above Gandaw. She dashed the sparking crown against the ceiling, crushing the filaments linking her to the black sphere, and then, with a second blow, the crown shattered.

  The chamber stilled, and from outside came nothing but a deathly silence.

  The Archon’s sword jutting from Eingana’s body sank deeper, until black scales closed over it.

  Gandaw took a step back, but Eingana’s tail whipped around his legs and held him fast. Coil upon coil, she wrapped around his body, until all that was visible was his head, aghast beneath its crystal helm. His lips moved fast now, and a babbling stream of pleas left them.

  Eingana’s jaws opened, and her head snapped down.

  Gandaw screamed. Greenish fluids sprayed as the giant serpent crunched down on him and swallowed him whole.

  Nameless watched in fascinated horror as a bulge passed down the serpent’s throat.

  Amber eyes turned toward Shader, and he braced himself. The serpent’s head bobbed atop its neck, and it seemed to Nameless that she nodded. Then, with a flick of her tail, she vanished, taking the Sword of the Archon with her.

  Shader sank slowly to his knees.

  Nameless let go of the black sword, and it drifted to the walkway, light as a feather. Rhiannon lunged for it and snatched it up.

  Numbness spread from Nameless’s mind to his limbs, and he hung his head in shame. His hands were shaking, and the rims of his eyes burned with the need to shed tears.

  Rhiannon’s hand on his shoulder made him look round at her. She let out a long sigh and managed a tight smile before glancing at Shader.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked. Her fingers stiffened on Nameless’s shoulder, and she let go. “We thought you’d given up. You should have bloody told us.”

  Shader opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t seem able to find the words.

  Mephesch’s head poked above the walkway, and then he rose into view atop a floating disk. He was beaming from ear to ear. He stepped off the disk and set about swiping symbols on the console mirror Gandaw had so recently been using. With a clunk and a hum, the ceiling snapped open a crack, and then the walls began to sin
k once more toward the floor.

  The black sphere was gone, and instead, a ray of sunlight lanced down through the opening. Motes of dust danced along its length all the way to the floor of the chamber.

  “You did it,” Rhiannon said. It sounded begrudging at first, but then she said, “Deacon, you did it.”

  “No thanks to me,” Nameless mumbled to himself.

  A change in the light made him look up.

  The receding walls gave way to skies of brilliant cobalt dotted with gossamer wisps of cloud. High above the Perfect Peak, the twin suns blazed with newfound health and vitality.

  As the walls retracted fully, exposing the stark expanse of the Dead Lands, Mephesch hopped back on his disk and descended all the way through the ground floor and down into the roots of the mountain.

  Shader climbed to his feet as greenish light flared out on the open plain.

  Nameless followed the knight’s gaze.

  A portal swirled into existence, and a figure stepped out of it. Nameless blinked against the glare, seeing little more than a silhouette, but Rhiannon tutted and went to lean out over a railing to watch the figure approaching.

  Even without seeing him clearly, Nameless knew who it was. It was starting to seem that nothing—not even the gaping maw of the Abyss—could stop Aristodeus from returning like a fly to a pile of dung.

  Way back past Aristodeus, at the edge of the swamp, a line of lizard-men spread out, staring up at the pristine sky.

  Aristodeus opened his arms and quickened his pace, and Mephesch ran to him. As the two of them walked back to the disk, Rhiannon shouldered her sword and headed for the steps down.

  “Nameless?” Shader said as he approached.

  Nameless jerked and then shook himself. “Laddie? Gods of Arnoch, laddie, you did it!”

  Shader hesitated for a moment, and then gripped Nameless by the wrist. “I did nothing.”

  It was the truth. Nameless and Rhiannon had fought tooth and nail, and had both nearly been killed in the process; Skeyr Magnus and his lizard-men, too. But when it had come down to it, in the heat of the moment, Shader had lowered the sword.