02 - Lords of Destruction

by James Silke - (ebook by Undead)

  He straddled her, bending over with his massive hands closing about her frail neck, and the helmet’s flames lashed her bare flesh and hair, his own fingers. The pain made him howl, but he held on, squeezing, and her body convulsed against his hands like a fish on the end of a spear, then surrendered and fell limp.

  The brute’s hands continued the pressure, relentless, abandoned to the kill. Suddenly he dropped her and staggered back, staring.

  The tiny beams of light were scurrying together on her back. Her torso heaved with breath, and she rolled over. The beams followed her, dashing-wildly about breasts and belly, and came to abrupt stops, each pulsing and expanding in size and brilliance as it fixed its beacon on one of the signs or numerals of the map Cobra had drawn on her flesh.

  The white light had found what it hunted.

  Forty-One

  SURRENDER

  Gath did not recognize the girl crumpled under him. His mind was on fire. Hammering his skull. Clouded. Then his mind began to come down off the top of the mountainous body and merge with it. Size, proportion, place came into focus, and he became aware of the billowing white light, the familiar faces watching him, and finally recognized the small naked girl. White light swirled about her, cradling her, and glowed within her, but there was no mistaking her. Robin Lakehair.

  Abject shame shook him, then he heard the Nymph Queen shout, “Kill her, you ape!” He turned hard, snarling.

  Tiyy screamed and backed up the staircase, her features shocked almost past recognition.

  Gath started for her, and the room shook, staggering him. He stopped short, and Jakar and Brown John rose uncertainly, bringing Cobra with them. She was slumped and gasping, her hands clutching the ugly steel bolt protruding above her breast. Suddenly wind howled and sucked at them, and the white light swirled in its grasp, emptying itself from the cave and rushing back toward the huge jewel.

  Gath kneeled beside Robin, shielding her from the wind and rushing light, and lifting her gently. She glowed from toes to hair, and her breath came in short gasps, her eyes closed and lips parted. Their color was back. His fingers touched her lips gently and her body became rigid in response. Then her eyes opened. They were stark with fear, then they smiled falteringly, and she went soft in his arms. Tears welled from her eyes, and when she spoke it was a soft cry.

  “Gath.”

  His body shuddered, stunned. It was only one word, but her tone said that within that single word was the entire tale of a man, and it was his tale.

  Gath helped Robin to her feet, and Jakar covered her with his cloak, handing her a length of her torn tunic to belt it with. As she did this, Gath turned to Brown John and Cobra. She was pale and gasping, sagging against the bukko and crying with joy.

  The room shook again, and they turned toward the pillar of light.

  The wind had stopped. The jewel was no longer sucking the white light in. It was now centered in the crystalline body, becoming denser and denser, until the crystal turned opaque white. Its glow filled the chamber. Then its opacity faded, leaving a flawless, transparent pillar. Encased within was the perfectly preserved body of an ancient priestess.

  Her pose was regal, yet kind, and she was muscular, with dark olive skin burnished by the sun. Her black hair was in wild disarray, uncut in the style of savages. Her only garments were girdle, halter and necklace, and they were made of sparkling diamonds.

  “The jewels!” gasped Cobra and Brown John.

  Gath, Brown John, Cobra and Jakar stared, mystified. The priestess was short and sturdy, her bones blunt and primitive, unlike anyone they knew. Yet her features were strangely familiar. They glanced from Robin to the ancient priestess and realized the savage priestess looked like Robin. They were almost identical.

  Robin realized it too, and staggered into Jakar’s arms, dumbfounded.

  A wailing shriek came from behind them, and they turned to see Tiyy howl, “No! No!” and spread her arms to send forth dark vapors and destroy them. But there was fear behind her eyes, and she faltered and sank back, lowering her arms, as if confronting an enemy more powerful than herself.

  “White Veshta!” Brown John whispered, and they looked once more at Robin.

  “Yes,” Cobra said weakly. “White Veshta incarnate.”

  The translucent pillar suddenly cracked open, and fumes came forth from the body of the preserved goddess. Instantly she began to decay. Flesh peeled, bones dissolved, and her limbs went up in smoke until all that remained were her jewels. The pillar itself dissolved into a mist. The jewels fell to the pedestal amid a flurry of white dust and tumbled to Robin’s feet.

  “Take them,” Cobra gasped. Robin looked at her, and she pointed weakly at the jewels. “Pick them up! Hurry! Hurry!”

  Robin hesitated, then gathered the jewels in her arms and rose, holding them against her chest. They instantly came alive in her grasp, writhing, glowing, and sparkling with shafts of white light. Where they touched her flesh, they began to merge with it, sinking into her, and she trembled with awe and wonder.

  When they vanished within her, the glow behind the eye slits of the horned helmet cooled and faded, revealing the shadowed eyes of Gath of Baal. They stared at Robin.

  Again her nut-brown face with its cheeks of budding roses was a theater of soft illusions, and her lips tiny mountains of color, the tissue of dreams. But this time the dreams were rooting inside him, finding sustenance in his blood and bone and muscle, and giving him a strength he had not had before.

  His hands took hold of the rim of the helmet and lifted it slightly. The helmet flinched at his touch, twisting away, and the eye slits flamed again. Gath’s body convulsed in pain, and the helmet howled and roared, but he held on, righting himself. He shuddered, then the glow behind the eye slits died once more, and the headpiece surrendered.

  Gath lifted the helmet off and stood facing his friends.

  His thick black hair was again singed and smoking, and his cheekbones, forehead and jawline were burnt raw and rimmed with ash. It made it difficult for him to smile.

  Robin raced into his arms and held him, sobbing, “Gath! Oh, Gath, it’s true.” She looked up into his burnished face. “You’re free.”

  The room shook again and there was a rending crack as dust fell from the ceiling. They all looked up and saw that the stone roof had cracked at the center and was slowly sinking, promising to bury them.

  Forty-Two

  HOME

  The homed helmet in his hand, Gath led them to the door and saw crossbow bolts streaking toward them. He stopped short, deflecting a bolt with the helmet, and shoved the others aside, out of range behind the wall framing the door.

  Tiyy stood halfway up the staircase behind her worm soldiers. They were hurriedly reloading their crossbows as she screamed at them, “Hurry! Hurry! Cut them down.”

  A worm soldier rose up to fire, and Gath threw his helmet. It caught the soldier in the shoulder, crushing his boneless meat, ricocheted off the wall, spitting sparks and flames to blind another soldier, and hit a third, ripping out his throat with its horns.

  Tiyy backed up three steps, staring in horror as the bloody headpiece fell at her feet and rolled off the staircase. She gulped a breath and screamed again at her stunned men, “Keep firing.”

  The worm soldiers let go a volley, and bolts screamed through the air, clanging against the obsidian wall, burying themselves in the wooden doorframe.

  Frustrated, the Nymph Queen shouted, “Attack! Attack!”

  A half dozen worm soldiers surged toward the open door, hissing wetly, with the steel blades protruding from their wrists weaving in front of them.

  Gath stepped out from behind the cell wall into the opening. He now held Brown John’s sword in front of him, and Jakar stood behind his shoulder firing his crossbow.

  The first worm soldier took the bolt in his face, and it tore through his skull-less head. Still he charged mindlessly, blindly swinging his bladed arms.

  Gath’s sword took off one arm at the e
lbow, and still he came, charging past Gath as his arm fell to the floor. It was still alive, like an earthworm torn in two.

  Ignoring it, Gath strode into the black room swinging the flat of the blade, crushing instead of stabbing, and his sword ate heartily of the spongy bodies, killing them.

  There was a sharp crack within the chamber. Gath glanced back over a shoulder and saw his friends crowding up behind him, their eyes wide with a new terror.

  Part of the chamber’s black stone ceiling had collapsed into the cell. Streams of dirt and rock were spilling out of the hole, and loud tearing sounds came from the ceiling where cracks were moving in jerks and jags through it.

  “We’ll be buried!” the bukko shouted. “We’ve got to get out of the tunnel! It leads to a tide pool!”

  He pointed at the barred door on the opposite side of the cave. Schraak stood behind it with his arm reaching through the bars, trying to grasp the homed helmet which lay on the floor just out of reach. To the sides of the gate, the huge, hooded carnivore worms were writhing out of their holes.

  Gath, raising the sword like a spear, threw it.

  The blade took one of the huge worms in the head, and it recoiled, began to writhe and whip its head about trying to dislodge the unwanted pain.

  Gath glanced up at Tiyy. She stood near the top of the staircase surrounded by worm soldiers. Gath’s eyes glittered dangerously, and he picked up two large stones, one in each hand. He ducked a crossbow bolt, then flung the rock, crushing a huge worm’s head.

  He used five more rocks, crushing the worms or trapping them in their holes, then threw a handful of small rocks at the crossbowmen on the staircase. The speed of the rocks was such that they drilled the spongy bodies and came out the opposite side. Panicking, the worm soldiers raced past Tiyy, vanished through the arched door at the top of the staircase.

  Gath retrieved the helmet and stood in the middle of the cave, lowering it over his head. Before it touched his neck, flames and black smoke roared from the eye slits.

  Tiyy turned to flee and the cave shook, threw her down. She rolled over the side of the staircase onto the floor of the cave.

  Gath moved for her, but hesitated as the cave again shook.

  Shrieks of breaking, tearing stone came from the dungeon cell, and Brown John, Cobra, Robin and Jakar surged out amid swirling clouds of dust. Behind them falling rocks and dirt were filling the cell.

  Tiyy jumped up, nimbly darted halfway back up the staircase, and cracks opened in the wall siding it. The arched doorway at the top of the stairs had collapsed, and dirt and rubble were spilling down the stairs toward her. She jumped back to the floor and hesitated.

  Gath could sense her only ten feet away, but his back was to her, and he was occupied, driving the last of the huge worms into its hole with the flames of the helmet.

  The nymph raced to the barred door blocking the passage to the tide pool and shouted, “Open it! Open it!”

  Schraak stood in the shadows behind the barred door, trembling and shaking his head.

  “Open it!” the nymph screamed.

  The small man backed up a step, still shaking his head, and turned, plunged into the passage out of sight. Tiyy brought her fingers to her lips and whistled shrilly, twice.

  A horrid scream came from within the passage, then Schraak reappeared beyond the bars. He was not walking, but was being propelled backward by some huge darkness filling the passage. He screamed again and again and came into the flickering light. He was clinging to the moist spongy head of a monstrous worm five times the size of the others. Its body was so thick it was scraping off chunks of rock from the sides of the passage. The legendary Anababis, the ancient carnivore worm of the primordial underworld and the guardian of Pyram’s dungeons. Black Veshta’s favorite pet.

  Tiyy slid to the side of the barred door, and Schraak was driven against it. He screamed and flailed, then came through the bars in large wet chunks of wormy flesh and fell into the cave in seven pieces.

  Robin screamed, and hid her face against Jakar’s chest. The young nobleman held her, but could not hold the color in his face.

  The worm kept on driving and the barred door burst free, clanging on the floor of the cave. Then the creature stopped with its massive featureless head beside its master, and Tiyy stroked it lovingly. In response, the worm spread its wrinkled face wide, opening its mouth until its gums touched both floor and ceiling of the passageway.

  Tiyy jumped nimbly over the lower teeth, landing barefoot in a splash of slime. She glanced around ropes of saliva hanging from the roof of the creature’s mouth at Robin as she lifted her head.

  “We’ll meet again,” Tiyy said matter-of-factly, then plunged into the pinkish-grey throat and vanished in its shadows, the splat of her running feet echoing behind her.

  Forty-Three

  INDIGESTION

  The giant worm dropped its mouth closed, dislodging enough saliva to fill a washtub, and plugged the tunnel.

  Gath looked around the cave.

  Rubble was spilling in from the dungeon cell and deep cracks in the wall behind the staircase, and dust swirled, filling the black cave. Robin, Jakar and Brown John coughed and choked as it gagged them, settling thickly on hair, eyelids and shoulders. Cobra was now unconscious in the bukko’s arms, and bleeding on his chest.

  Brown John answered the question in Gath’s eyes before he could ask it. “It’s the only way out.” He nodded at the giant worm. “You’ve got to get us past that creature.”

  Gath nodded, glanced at Robin’s hope-filled eyes as they watched him, and rushed into the dust swirling out the cell.

  Working almost blindly, he found the timber door and kicked it down. He ripped and twisted at a timber, and it came away from the debris wearing a large rusted hinge. Holding it in both massive hands, he advanced out of dust and stood face-to-face with the worm. Black smoke spewed from the helmet’s eye slits and the red glow reappeared within it.

  The worm’s wrinkled face jerked and opened slightly, spreading webs of slime across thick blunt teeth.

  Gath lowered his head, and flames erupted from the eye slits. They seared the worm’s face, and its spongy grey flesh puckered like the skin of a fig, the wet slime sizzling and steaming. Instinctively the creature writhed backward, cramming its shapeless head inside the tunnel, and spread its jaws. Saliva as thick as rope was strung between its teeth.

  Gath swung the heavy timber, hammering the teeth with the rusted hinge, and three broke off, making an opening as wide as a door. He swung again, and the worm spit out a gob of saliva large enough to bathe in. The congealed liquid slurped around Gath’s legs, and he slipped, plunging forward out of control into the mouth, and it closed with a wet slap.

  Inside the worm’s mouth, Gath rolled forward, slipping toward the digestive tract and barely hearing Robin’s faint scream outside. Still holding the timber, he wrestled it sideways, jamming it against the sides of the worm’s throat, and came to a sudden stop. Gathering his balance, he found he was knee-deep in guck, barely able to move his legs. He spewed flames around the interior of the worm’s mouth, and the instinctive creature writhed and again opened its mouth, trying to eject him with its convulsing body.

  Gath held his ground, took hold of the timber and ripped it free. Then he thrust it up, this time jamming it vertically between the mushy jaws. He kicked at the base of it until the timber was firmly stuck in place with the creature’s jaws spread wide, and looked outside at Brown John.

  “Come on! Hurry!” The three words were one harsh yell.

  Brown John and the others hesitated, unable to accept for a moment the nature of the passageway offered to them. Then the bukko shouted, “Let’s go,” and stepped through the gap in the worm’s teeth, carrying Cobra. Robin and Jakar followed.

  Gath proceeded into the digestive tract of the worm, spewing flames around its gummy interior, and it flinched and convulsed, opening the passage wider. The others followed rapidly, scrambling and dodging in an effort to
avoid the sting of digestive fluids, and choking on their putrid gases.

  Every time the walls of the worm’s interior convulsed against Robin, a glittering diamond would appear on her flesh emitting beams of white light which burnt and repelled the offending flesh.

  Near the middle of the worm, the tract began to narrow, and Gath had to crouch low, pushing and shoving, as well as burning away protruding glands and growths. Suddenly the helmet sensed a threat up ahead, and he charged forward, shouldering the meat aside.

  Just short of the end of the tract, the savage nymph goddess was on her hands and knees hacking an opening in the side of the worm with her knife. Flashes of guttering torchlight were slipping through the cut she had already made, and splashing across her slick body.

  Gath’s legs churned forward, the horns of his helmet chewing up the narrowing sides of the tract, his knees banging it aside.

  Tiyy glanced over a shoulder, her large, sloped eyes bright with reckless daring, then dove into the cut up to her hips and came to a stop. Stuck. She wiggled and squirmed violently, and began to slip through.

  Gath dove for a kicking ankle, and it vanished through the cut. Growling, he jumped up, holding the roof of the tract away with his back, and pulling apart the sides of the small hole Tiyy had made. He turned the eye slits on the sides of the hole, and flame erupted, burning the hole wider and wider and weakening the surrounding flesh. Then he ripped the hole wide enough to serve as a second mouth, and held it open.

  When the others reached him, Jakar took Gath’s place, and the Barbarian dove through the hole, leading the way. The hole opened on the vertical staircase, and he dashed down it with the others following.