Lady of Poison

by Bruce R Cordell

  His foul breath, already hot, became a flame in truth. The coiling, white-hot fire focused itself on Victoricus, who made as if to turn, maybe to run. They would never know; when the flame touched their chaperone, its body flashed instantly from ice directly to steam, foregoing liquid. A black mist whirled away, leaving only a damp stain on the cavern floor.

  Marrec held forth his hand, waiting for Justlance to return. Instead, Eschar plucked the bloodied spear from its side. The demon shouldn’t have been able to do that. He shouldn’t … his spear flashed back through the air, arrowing for Marrec’s heart. He fell forward, trying to dive, but simply tripped. The tip of Justlance scored the back of his armor.

  Ususi was beside him. She said, “Get inside the dome and get the token. Command the queen to aid us. We’ll distract this whoreson of the Nine Hells.”

  So saying, she shot a narrow beam of energy directly into Eschar’s eyes. It caused the demon, which had grabbed Elowen by one leg and begun squeezing, to cry out and loose the elf. It clapped both hands to its eyes, rubbing furiously while continuing to bellow.

  Marrec used the moment to slip past Eschar into the dome.

  Elowen’s leg bled freely where Eschar had squeezed with its clawed hands. She saw Marrec slip past while the demon continued to rub its eyes. Time to provide further distraction.

  She darted to the demon’s left, at the same time drawing Dymondheart along the inside of her foe’s overlarge knee. The living bladed sliced deep through tendon and sinew. Had her own leg not pained her so, she wondered if she could not have ended the fight right there, but hampered as she was, she had to settle for what she could get. Eschar’s new scream of pain seemed a good reward.

  Then Elowen noted that the tissue was reknitting, disappearing before her eyes. She yelled to Gunggari to her left, “His wounds are healing!”

  Gunggari, who continued to batter the demon, seemingly to little effect, scowled more deeply. At the very least, he was keeping the demon off balance with the force he imparted with each blow.

  Its eyes finally clearing from Ususi’s magical blast, the demon glanced at Elowen then kicked her. She fell into a bed of small clay vessels that were half-buried in ash. Her mouth filled with a sharp, metallic taste as she choked on the cloud of dust her flailing body fountained into the air. Blinking her eyes to clear them, she looked up to see that Eschar stood over her. The demon must have decided to be done with her once and for all.

  Gunggari jostled and vibrated the demon from behind, but his war club lacked sufficient magical charge to fully penetrate the demon’s magical hide. The Oslander wasn’t going to save her.

  The demon slashed a claw down upon the prone elf. Elowen flipped her sword, on which she had retained her grasp despite her short arc through the air, into a high block and held it with both hands.

  Any other weapon might have shattered, but the living blade, despite its strange diminishment, held true. Elowen felt her arms buckle beneath the impact, but the claws failed to rake her. That time.

  A wall of yellow instantly grew between Elowen and her attacker. It was Ususi, who once again called upon the power of her precious wand. The elf hunter used the seconds the wall bought her to scramble to her feet.

  As Elowen rushed around the side of the wall, she heard a great yell. It was the demon. Gunggari had managed to crack the demon on the back of the head hard enough to get its attention.

  Eschar whirled and advanced upon the retreating Oslander. Eschar growled, “If I can’t suck the marrow from the elf’s bones, man meat will have to satisfy … until I catch you all.”

  The demon breathed in deeply then exhaled. Again, the very air ignited with hellish fire, sending a snaking tendril of white-orange flame in Gunggari’s direction.

  Gunggari dodged aside. Though the flame failed to fall full upon him, the backwash of heat still brought blisters to his skin and choked a grunt of pain from his lips. Worse, he dropped his dizheri.

  Eschar paused then, a slightly puzzled expression looking out of place on the demon’s horrendous visage. He said, “Wait. You numbered one more …”

  Screaming in sudden fury, the horned demon whirled and raced toward the open mouth of the white dome.

  Marrec ran along a narrowing corridor of egg-shell white. Like the inside of a conch shell, the corridor seemed to whirl ever closer to some still-hidden center. Marrec became certain that the dome’s interior was somewhat larger than the exterior promised. The sounds of his friends’ struggle against Eschar quickly faded behind him. Then the sounds of his muffled footfall on the hard surface competed only with the beat of surging blood in his ears as his heart hammered.

  He nearly tripped when Justlance finally, tardily, materialized in his grip. Good, he needed the light that still radiated from its tip.

  Marrec couldn’t decide how many full circuits he’d made, each one smaller than the last, but he guessed about nine, when he came to the inmost chamber.

  Also dome shaped, rising to a height of at least twenty feet, the chamber was mostly empty.

  Nine pedestals graced the periphery of the circular room. The pedestals, equidistantly spaced, stood at the edges of a nine-pointed star inscribed in red across the floor. Most of the pedestals were empty, though each contained a hollow concavity, apparently sized to accept strangely shaped amulets, tools, or other implements that Marrec didn’t want to spend time attempting to imagine.

  Five of the pedestals contained items, though to the cleric’s unpracticed eye it seemed that only one of those items was actually the object meant to be housed; none of the other objects fit its particular hollow, shelf, or hangar so snugly. It was a night black cloak, so dark that it seemed a void, which was draped across a perfectly shaped hangar.

  The other four items included a dagger made from a red talon, an orb of hazy green set in a golden ring, a sword seemingly forged of pale bone, and a chunk of white, translucent crystal in which something dark was caught.

  What had the Queen Abiding said? “You’ll know it when you see it” or some such.

  He sprinted across the floor to the pedestal holding the crystal chunk. Hefting it, his fingers were immediately chilled, and condensation formed, dripping off his hand. He gazed into the object, studying that which was caught within. Marrec’s eyes couldn’t seem to focus on it. First a smear, then some great winged thing it seemed, then a wriggling worm, then back to a dark imperfection.

  The crystal had to be it. He clutched it close. Marrec’s eyes fell across the other items stored in the chamber, obviously precious bits gathered by Eschar. He suspected that all were tainted by association with the failed Nar race. Look what came of them for their congress with demons, he thought. With his single prize, he dashed from the room.

  The cleric made to retrace his route, circling outward, but leaving the room immediately spit him into the great cavern. He stood before the open mouth of the dome at the center of the Sighing Vault a little off balance; Marrec’s body thought it should be racing around in wider circles, as it had on entering the dome.

  His eyes were filled with the form of Eschar, who was upon him.

  CHAPTER 24

  Fallon nearly stumbled, his foot catching across the lintel of the dark room into which he pulled himself and Ash. He had a sense that something was following behind him. Too far to see and hear directly, but the elf could sense something closing on him. He hadn’t heard or smelled anything specific or seen a betraying light, but a mixture of subtle clues colluded. The sum of those clues was inescapable, though he knew most people would never know they had become quarry until too late. His sense was accurate enough for him to discern that that which hunted him was not the group sent out by the Nentyarch that had trailed him earlier through that thoroughly inexplicable extradimensional space. Fallon’s pursuer was something far more implacable.

  After all, despite his betrayal of the Nentyarch, he was a hunter trained by the Circle of Leth. His skills were considerable in their own right, even though thei
r use was no longer sanctioned. Oh well, time for yet more unsanctioned activity, he decided.

  Fallon adjusted the shade on his hooded lantern to a wider aperture, allowing the finger-thin gleam of light to widen to a cone of amber radiance. His elven eyes, sensitive beyond those of men, studied that which was revealed.

  The side chamber glittered in the increased light. Some sort of white dust, like particles of salt, coated the floor, walls, and even the ceiling. Lumps under a powdery coating were scattered across the floor of the chamber. Most of the lumps were fist-sized, but a few were larger, half a foot across bigger. The largest was an elongated lump almost six feet long and a little over a foot wide, though it was tapered at each end.

  Another exit poked through the far wall of the small chamber. The dusty covering seemed thicker over there.

  Stepping carefully, Fallon approached the largest lump. Brushing away some of the coating, which shifted and flowed as if in truth sea salt, Fallon’s suspicion was confirmed: a completely desiccated humanoid body, mummified and shrunken beneath an ancient cocoon of material. The elf doubted the whitish powder was salt in truth, but a remnant of something more insidious. He didn’t have the stomach to investigate the identity of the smaller lumps.

  He whispered to the girl, who still stood just inside the doorway, “Want to bet something nasty lives through there?” Fallon gestured toward the small exit in the chamber where the white coating was thickest. Ash did not deign to respond.

  Walking with practiced ease, Fallon sidled over to the exit. The beam of his lantern illuminated a short passage in which lay a snowy layer so thick that drifts completely covered the floor to a depth of at least six inches. Beyond the passage, the light revealed a wide expanse. His eyes narrowed, his breath coming in a short gasp when he registered movement in that far chamber—many, many somethings.

  He breathed easier when, after a moment, it seemed that he had not disturbed the activity he’d probed with the lantern beam. A good thing—he guessed that it would be a lethal journey had he blundered through the drifts into the chamber. He and Ash would have to go back to the tunnel they had been initially traversing.

  The inklings of a plan tickled him. Perhaps some misdirection was in order. That which pursued him had too easy a time of it, stalking a quarry too afraid to turn aside. Perhaps he would “turn aside” here, he thought. Fallon estimated he only had about fifteen minutes of grace, assuming that which tailed him didn’t change its velocity.

  The elf opened his pack, looking for the implements he would need to pull off his subterfuge.

  The creature known as Ezekial swept ahead through the darkness, not hurrying, but like the tide when it changes, unstoppable. A predator by nature, a killer by predilection, and an assassin by trade, Ezekial tasted the essence of the fools that fled before him. One was an elf, that Ezekial could tell with only a sniff, though the elf had some skill in concealing its passage. However, with the elf’s scent sighing through his nostrils, very little could put him off the trail.

  The predator’s eyes narrowed, as it intermittently sensed the other member of the duo he tracked. There was something in that scent that seemed to threaten Ezekial, in a manner not unlike the eastern sky threatening to push back the night. He didn’t know what to make of that, and had not Damanda commanded the chase, he might have decided to pass up that particular quarry.

  But Damanda’s command could not be denied. She was his mistress, his progenitor, his very existence. The blightlord’s cruel domination was the closest thing Ezekial would ever know to devotion.

  A confusion of scents hazed the passage ahead.

  A side chamber gave off the main passage he traversed, like many he had previously passed, though without a valve or door to conceal its contents. The trail of his quarry led both ahead and into the chamber.

  A crux of indecision; which trail was the most recent? A few sniffs revealed that the odor of life he followed like a beacon was stronger to his left. It wafted from the chamber, enticing him closer. He licked his lips; yes, there it was—blood. Blood had been spilled, and it was fresh. Ezekial frowned. He hoped he would not be robbed of the reward he had promised himself. It wouldn’t be the first time quarry he chased through Under-Tharos fell victim to something more terrible than himself.

  The scent milled indecisively throughout the chamber. Living creatures had only recently vacated that chamber, he felt confident, but which way had they gone? His eyes, functioning perfectly in the absolute darkness, focused on the chamber’s only other exit. A fall of powder, like snow, spilled from it in shallow drifts.

  Footprints tracked through the drifts, leading into the exit and through the tunnel beyond. The smell was so intense that Ezekial was certain his quarry was just minutes ahead, maybe seconds. When he heard the slight rustling from the chamber beyond the exit tunnel, he exulted. The quarry was trying to hide. Though the sounds were slight, the vampire’s supernatural senses didn’t miss much.

  So strong was the smell, and so certain was Ezekial that the rustling was the furtive sounds of those he sought, that he failed to note the strangely regular pattern of the footfalls and the way they did not make an impression deep enough to carry the weight of a full-grown humanoid or perhaps even that of a child.

  Ezekial flitted ahead, bursting into the chamber beyond, a vicious grin on his inhuman features. He had to wade through the sea-salt-sized grains that covered the floor at an increasing depth as he moved forward. The raspy, white powder then reached his shins.

  If his quarry hid in the chamber into which Ezekial burst, it was burrowed under the massive drifts of white that covered the floor, shrouded the walls, and dripped from the ceiling in strange stalactite-like formations. Only the center of the chamber was clear.

  The central clearing, crater-like, held a nearly-black sphere about one foot in diameter. White lines, the same color white as the strange substance all around them, ran like imperfections through the globe. Without visible mechanism, the globe was slowly spinning on its shallow bed of pale salt.

  Ezekial paused. Was the sound of the revolving sphere the sound he’d heard?

  A moment later he realized not. The sound was that of the “salt” crystals themselves. Like a ripple sweeping away from a stone cast into water, the white motes first closest to the orb, then those further away, and so on, began to stir. They revealed themselves for what they really were, unfurling, unfolding, and flexing.

  Thousands, millions, maybe, of salt-white, tiny demonlings filled the chamber. They were all drawing sudden animation from the orb, whose eye-like shape peered into Ezekial’s mind.

  The vampire had a single moment before the white mass of demonlings encompassed him, closing him into a hermetically sealed sarcophagus of sucking evil from which there was no escape, not even for one such as him. He might have used that moment to slide his physical body into shifty vapor. Instead, he surprised himself by letting rip with a scream of terror—his first and last.

  A cry, quickly silenced, echoed down the passage. Fallon nearly jumped at the sound’s savage ferocity, its supernatural volume, and its warbling fear. Then he grinned. Fallon had caught something in his trap. He rubbed his left palm where he’d cut himself, just a little, to entice that which hunted him with a smell that he had hoped would make it less attentive to its surroundings.

  The Rotting Man had told Fallon, during their unpleasant mental communication, that Damanda would meet him and Ash in Under-Tharos.

  While he’d worked for Anammelech, the blightlord had related something of Damanda and her pets.

  It didn’t take too much of a leap to guess that Damanda, commanded to collect Fallon, would have her vampires in tow. In fact, the elf suspected that Damanda herself was a night stalker, though one of exceptional skill and mastery. Anammelech had never said.

  If one her pets had fallen into the grasp of the horror the elf glimpsed back in the white room, that still left Damanda with three of her four favorites, if what he remembered of
Anammelech’s idle talk could be trusted—her inner cadre numbered but four. Three now, he corrected himself.

  When his thoughts tried to return to the abyssal infestation occupying the white room and what his pursuer’s fate might be, he shook his head. Of the abominations that lay scattered throughout these vaults, he doubted he had yet stumbled upon the worst. Thinking about any one of them for too long was unlikely to prove healthy.

  He continued forward again, his gait lighter. The elf retained his grip on the child’s hand. She seemed capable of keeping up with his rapid pace without tiring. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even seem to be making that much of an effort. Again, he wondered what she represented. He knew, based on his experience with her and a feeling that was transmitted merely by touch that, if nothing else, she represented something good, something uncontaminated by poor decisions and something that would not, or could not, recognize the concept of betrayal.

  For Fallon, her touch hinted at restitution and perhaps redemption.

  When a hint of fresher air brushed his face, he wondered for a moment if his thoughts had conjured a memory of open air. No, he really did feel a faint breeze, issuing from yet another side passage.

  Fallon bent, sniffed, held a wetted finger in the air and considered.

  “Well, girl,” he finally said, grinning, “I may have found us an exit to the surface.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Eschar collided with Marrec, knocking the cleric to the side. Marrec nearly lost his grip on the icy token he’d collected from the nine-fold chamber.

  The demon squealed in anger. Marrec supposed he survived the contact because his sudden exit caught Eschar off guard. The time it took the cleric to wonder about his survival was too much. Already, Eschar’s hellish eyes tracked him. The demon’s claws moved to make an eviscerating strike. His hand cold on the token of control, Marrec felt his options were down to but one.