Tha-Agoth rose from where he knelt next to the slain soldier, starlight eyes afire.
He is a scourge, a blight on the world. He must be destroyed.
“He also seems to know your line of march,” I said. “Perhaps we should deviate from it a bit, just to keep him guessing.” I didn't want to catch a stray blade. I might not have much of a soul, but what I did have I wanted to keep. And since it seemed that Holgren and I would be twitching on the ground every time there was a skirmish, I'd just as soon avoid any more violence along the way.
Tha-Agoth had other ideas.
Let them come in their hundreds. I will destroy them all.
“Holgren and I along with them, most likely.”
Perhaps. That is not my concern.
“Well, it is mine. But forget about us. How many more of your men are you willing to see die? Did you bring them back after a thousand years, just to blithely see them perish?"
I will not let the Shadow King sway me from my path.
“Then you're a fool,” I said. He didn't bother to respond.
We went through three more ambushes by the umbrals that night. Each time, we spent most of the melee twitching on the ground, waiting for death. It was one of the darkest nights I've ever lived through. I can think of little worse than the feeling of utter powerlessness that possessed me that night.
By the third attack, Tha-Agoth had lost more than half his troops. Perhaps thirty remained. Those left still wore those beatific, untroubled looks on their faces. They were serving their god, sure of their destiny despite his inability to bring them back to life. They were idiots, led by a dangerous deity.
After the last umbral attack, Holgren took me in his shaky arms and buried his face in my neck. “Leave, Amra,” he whispered. “Walk away now. Go back to Lucernis and leave all this behind. Go home.”
I raised up his head and put two fingers to his lips. Then I put my hand over his heart. “This is my home now,” I said. “No more talk of me leaving, Holgren. I'll see this through to the end.”
“You're a damned fool,” he said, and a thin smile touched his lips.
One thing I couldn't figure out was why Tha-Agoth didn't just destroy the umbrals himself. After what he'd done to the death lands, I thought it should have been child's play for him.
“I believe he only wields that sort of power in Thagoth,” said Holgren when I mentioned it. “If you remember, he said something about that place being special to him because of the blood he shed to protect it.”
“So he isn't the all-powerful being he seemed this afternoon.”
“I really don't think he is, else he would have had the entire world under his sway a thousand years ago.”
“Let's just hope he's powerful enough to finish the Shadow King,” I said.
We suffered no more attacks from the shadowy umbrals that night. As dawn approached I began to believe we might be safe for another day. I should have remembered the mother of monsters. Shemrang.
Athagos. You are close, now, said Tha-Agoth to himself. I feel you.
He stood staring through the dark to the east. I feel you, moving through the night, a shadow among the shadows. I can almost smell you. I can almost hear your breath ... He shuddered, the longing plain on his face.
I didn't pretend to understand what strange emotions they held between them. Forgetting the fact that she was his sister, how could he want her when she had betrayed him and doomed him to agony for a thousand years?
Neither was human, I finally decided, and human morals, human emotions and motivations simply did not obtain.
After a time he shook himself and ripped another hole in reality.
Inky tendrils of distilled night shot through the opening and tore him in half.
Tha-Agoth screamed. The rift began to collapse. The tentacles pulled Tha-Agoth's upper half through the collapsing rift as the smaller nightmares poured through to finish the soldiers. They were hideously fast, faster than they'd been when we'd encountered them in the Flame's halls.
Holgren had to stay with Tha-Agoth. If he didn't he was finished. I shoved him through the closing rift and prayed as Tha-Agoth's shrieking soldiers lay me flat and twitching. I hit the ground hard, facing east. The rift closed completely.
I waited for death to come in the form of one of Shemrang’s offspring. Out in the distance, perhaps two miles away I saw a great blossoming of light, pure white mixed with warm gold, and prayed that Holgren had been able to drive Shemrang and her children away again.
The Thagothians dispatched all of the creatures that had swarmed through the gate, but at a high cost. Only twelve of Tha-Agoth's men remained. I survived, I think, mainly because I wasn't a moving target. They likely mistook me for dead.
Once the shrieks died away and control returned to my body, I stood on shaky legs and tottered off to the east.
“Let him be alive,” I muttered to myself. Behind me the Thagothians heaved up the lower half of their god on broad bronze shoulders and followed me. Or at least they moved in the same direction as I did.
The sky was lightening in the east. Soon the Shadow King’s creatures would have no power above ground. If Holgren still lived, we might be able to make it to Shadowfall before night and destroy the massive black block that I suspected housed all the Shadow King’s power. If Holgren was dead…. He wasn't. He couldn't be. Completely unacceptable.
I stumbled into a shaky run.
False dawn had taken the sky before I arrived at where I thought I'd seen the magelight flare, allowing me to take in my surroundings more fully. Snow had not fallen this far east. I realized we were fairly near the river where Holgren and I had first met the umbrals. We'd traveled much further than I had realized.
We were on the edge of the great expanse of grassland that led down to the river in an area of thorny shrubs and scattered, wind-twisted trees. The ground was uneven. I stumbled more than once. All the while I scanned the horizon for some sign of Holgren or Tha-Agoth. I saw nothing, had seen nothing since that burst of light.
I found them in a shallow depression nearly hidden by the surrounding brush. The upper half of Tha-Agoth lay bleeding in sparse graying grass. His eyes were closed. Holgren lay not far away. At first I thought he was dead, and a stabbing pain ripped through my heart. Then I saw the slow rise and fall of his chest.
He drove the creatures away. It cost him dearly. Tha-Agoth regarded me with his starlight eyes. I ignored him. His followers would arrive soon with his lower half and he'd be as good as new.
I went to Holgren and turned him over. His face was bloody, his clothes shredded. Shemrang or her children had gotten hold of him, at least briefly.
“He saved your life,” I said. "Heal him.”
No.
“How can a god be so petty?” I asked. “How can you refuse aid to someone who freed you from a thousand years of torment?”
If he lives, I will forgive him his betrayal. More I will not do.
The others arrived. Tha-Agoth busied himself with putting his body back together. I cradled Holgren's head in my lap and wiped the worst of the blood from his face. He breathed, shallowly, but did not wake.
Tha-Agoth and his men were ready to go in less than half an hour. Holgren still hadn't woken.
“Tha-Agoth,” I said. “I need your help. If you won't heal him, at least have your men carry him. If he gets too far from you, he will become the Shadow King's creature. It will be another victory for your enemy.”
At first I thought he would refuse even this, but he simply nodded, tight-jawed, and one of the soldiers discarded his shield and threw Holgren over his shoulder.
Tha-Agoth stared off to the east, into the rising sun. She fords a river, he said. She is very close now.
“Then she's also very close to Shadowfall.” I said. “We should be able to get there long before dark, and take the Shadow King at his weakest.”
First my sister, he said, then my enemy.
“What if she doesn't want to go bac
k to Thagoth?” I asked him.
She will do as I say. But he sounded less than certain.
“If you say so.”
She will. She must. It is only the necklace that forces her away, the filthy necklace that you put on her.
I said nothing, but began to wonder. A thought occurred to me: Just who had bound her to the Tabernacle grounds, and why? I had suspected things were not as they had seemed, and never had been. The feeling grew in me.
The next rift opened on the bank of the river where I'd had a mule's head staring back at me as I'd bathed. It was the last Tha-Agoth would open.
From here we follow solely on foot. She is very close now. He forded the river, and we all followed. Once across the water and into the trees, he stopped and sniffed, like some predator tracking its prey. Tha-Agoth moved forward, a little to the south, and we followed.
I kept an eye on Holgren, checking periodically to make sure he was still breathing. It ate at me that there was nothing more I could do for him. That Tha-Agoth would do nothing for him I tried not to think about, as the rage it engendered made me want to plunge my knife into his godly back.
We moved through the woods. After a time I thought I began to recognize where we were heading. It wasn't anywhere I wanted to go. My suspicions were confirmed when we emerged into the clearing that had once contained the Flame's pyramid.
She has gone to ground there, said Tha-Agoth, pointing toward the gaping hole I'd helped create.
“That's what I was afraid of,” I muttered. More than likely it was also where Shemrang and her vicious children had gone to ground as well. Tha-Agoth might be able to survive being ripped in half, but Holgren and I wouldn't.
I tried again to reason with him. “Tha-Agoth, please listen to me. Let me lead you to Shadowfall now. If you destroy the Shadow King, Athagos will be free, not to mention Holgren. You don't have to waste time getting rid of the necklace if you destroy him. Going down into that pit is only asking for trouble.”
No. Athagos first. I will deal with the Shadow King only after I’ve found my sister.
I sighed. Exactly what I'd expected, but I had to try. “Be ready to deal with Shemrang and her offspring again, then. Only this time Holgren won't be able to drive her off, since you won't heal him.”
He said nothing, only climbed down into the darkness. The rest of us followed. I had no doubt it was going to be bad down there in the dark. I just didn't know how bad.
Kerf & Isin, Part the Third
On the plane of deities, Isin was berating Kerf.
“How do you know it isn't the Shadow King's reign that is about to begin?” she asked. “If we had taken care of the Twins ourselves as I suggested, none of this would be happening. His influence would have been limited to those he could trick to coming to him. In time he would have faded away as magic did. Now he's poised to usher in an age of death and darkness!”
Kerf leaned heavily on his crooked staff, the weight of worlds seemingly settled on his uneven shoulders.
“Isin, calm yourself. Death and darkness are always waiting to sweep down on an unsuspecting world. Sometimes they even prevail. But it is our function to aid mortality, not protect it from all possible harm. Free will entails responsibility, oh goddess of the kind heart and lovely smile.”
“Don't try to flatter me, Kerf. The fact remains that the Twins are our responsibility. They aren't mortal. They were destined to join us. I should never have let you persuade me to let those poor mortal dears try to settle the matter.”
“You've grown attached to them, is all. You have a sentimental investment in them. So do I. I've taken a real liking to that foul-mouthed, foul-tempered woman and her partner. But the very nature of heroism entails just such life-or-death endeavors as they're undertaking. When this is over, they'll be stronger, wiser, and more fully human than they ever would have been had I not set them on the trail of Thagoth.”
“That is cold comfort if they die, Kerf, and you know it. It isn't even your real motive. You're an inveterate meddler.”
“And the world is a better place for it. Do I have ulterior motives? None that I haven't already revealed. I don't want to leave this age hero-less. Is that so terrible? Who knows what this next crew will be like? Just because our time here is at an end doesn't mean our responsibility is as well.”
“Don't start prattling about responsibility to me, you old scoundrel. I’ll say it again: The Twins were our responsibility. They're our children, after all.”
“I hadn't thought it possible, but you are even more lovely when you grow wroth, fair Isin. Why did I ever let you go?”
“Kerf—”
“Isin, I've felt every pain of every mortal I singled out for greatness, be it physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. I have suffered every ill of Aridhall Flamehand, of Halfa the Wanderer King, of Havak Silversword and a dozen-dozen more both famous and obscure. And now I add Amra Thetis and Holgren Angrado to the list. I know what I ask of them, and I pay as surely as they do. Look at me. I was not always a hunchbacked, crippled old god. You know that.”
Isin relented a little, touched Kerf’s lined face with one cool, soft hand. “I know, Kerf. I know. And to me, you're still that brash youth that won my heart when the world was young.”
Kerf grabbed her hand in his own and pressed it to his lips. “Ah my love, perhaps in the next age we will discover what we might have been together. It is my one regret, you know. Choosing duty over love.”
“You are what you are, Hero Maker. I knew that when I took you to my bed. Now hush. I want to pay attention to what's happening. And if those lovers lose their lives or worse, you'll regret it for a dozen ages. Do I make myself clear?”
Chapter 10
I tried to keep my eyes everywhere at once as we made our way down the mound of rubble to the hall’s floor. I scanned every shadowed recess, searching for signs of tentacled nightmares. I had half-expected Shemrang herself to be waiting in the great hall. She was too massive to fit anywhere else. She wasn't there, but that didn't mean her offspring weren't. Attack could come from anywhere, at any time.
I was not afraid—that emotion seemed to have been burned out of me. My only concern was for survivalmine and Holgren's. Instead of fear, a cold, muted anger suffused me. It had much to do with the pigheaded god and his twelve silent soldiers descending ahead of me, the murderous, mad goddess they tracked, and the thing made out of nightmare and shadows that we would have to face, very soon now. And the shadow's creatures. Mustn't forget Shemrang and her get.
It was a bleak feeling that made me colder and harder than I had ever been before I discovered what I felt for Holgren. Seeing him slung over one of the soldier's shoulders like a lump of meat, refused healing by the one he'd saved from being torn to shreds—I discovered what it truly meant to have a hard heart. Tha-Agoth might be our only hope of defeating the Shadow King, but if I ever had the chance to do him ill, I would seize it. I promised myself I would leave him twisting in the wind.
When we had all descended to the stone floor of the hall, Tha-Agoth sniffed the air like an animal.
She was here, just moments ago. Which way, though? Which way has she fled?
“She could be anywhere,” I told him. “This place is a labyrinth. It could take days to find her. While you're searching she could slip by you and be taken by the Shadow King. Destroy him now, Tha-Agoth. It's the only sure way.”
He didn't even glance in my direction. This way, I think. Yes. He strode off toward the stairs where Holgren had made the blood dolls, and his men followed.
So did I, cursing them all silently and keeping an eye out for spider-limbed, tentacled monsters.
Tha-Agoth may not have needed light to make his way through pitch-black stone corridors, but I certainly did. Since his men did as well, he called into being a golden glow that suffused his body and drove the darkness back. The light also made him a target. I wished fervently that when we were attacked, it was him the beasts would go after and not the so
ldiers. Holgren would most likely suffer should they be attacked.
Tha-Agoth would pause periodically to sniff the air or bend down and touch the stones of the floor with thick fingers. Then he would resume his hunt.
In this fashion we made our way through dusty corridors for what felt like hours. I began to suspect Athagos was leading us around in circles on purpose. The thought came to me that she planned to keep us from reaching Shadow-fall for as long as possible—probably until nightfall, when the Shadow King would be most powerful.
I turned it around in my head. It felt right, even if I couldn't understand why she'd do it.
Eventually we were headed toward what I realized was the old Sorcerer King's sanctum. Was Athagos leading us there on purpose? Did she have some reason to go there, or was it chance or her madness? I had no answers, nor could I see what difference it really made.
We descended the stairs that led to the sanctum. Tha-Agoth paused there at the base of the stairs, in front of the door to the lair.
I sense something, he said, head cocked to one side. Some power.
I didn't enlighten him. I owed him nothing. Perhaps the husk that had been the Sorcerer King had a surprise left for his age-old enemy. Or Athagos had something in store for her brother. In any case, I wanted no part of it. I had a feeling that unpleasant things were about to happen in that unpleasant place.
When the Flame started whispering in my mind I nearly jumped out of my skin. I'd forgotten all about him.
Do not enter the sanctum, the Flame's voice hissed in my head. Do not let the mage enter, if you value his soul.
“We'll just wait out here, if you don't mind,” I said to Tha-Agoth.
Do as you will. It matters little to me. I tapped the soldier who was carrying Holgren on the shoulder and said “Let him down.”
He helped me lower Holgren to the floor. I checked Holgren's heartbeat. It was thready. Huge welts on his neck and face oozed pus where the monster's tentacles must have touched his flesh. He looked as close to death as he could be without actually being dead. If I'd had any impulse to warn Tha-Agoth of the danger that lay ahead, Holgren's condition squashed it.
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