Rise of the Death Dealer (56 page)

DARK GODDESS

G
ath, lit by guttering lamp light, hung lifelessly between chains at the back
of the cell. His arms were fully extended and his legs spread apart, with
shackles binding his wrists and ankles. They were chained to the side walls so
that he was suspended clear of the stone floor. His helmeted head hung between
his shoulders, and tiny bites speckled his body, which was pale under its
sun-darkened blood smeared flesh.

Slowly the helmet lifted, and the shadowed eyes behind the eye slits studied
the savage nymph.

Nearly naked, breathing rapidly and glistening with the heat of some hard
effort, she held two vials in her fists. A small slick man came out of the
tunnel behind her and stood obediently to her side. He was shaking so badly that
the ring of keys in his hand jangled noisily.

Gath growled, low and instinctively, and a smile lifted the nymph’s cheeks.
She said, “Welcome to Pyram, large one. I am Tiyy, the Nymph Queen, and high
priestess of Black Veshta. I presume you have heard of me?” Gath made no reply,
and her eyes thinned. “I like that. I am partial to proud, defiant men, and you
are easily the proudest of the lot. That’s why you are still alive. I am going
to give you a chance to see who you prefer… me or the girl.” Gath pulled on
his chains but could summon little strength, and the shackles cut into wrists
and ankles, causing the drumming pain to throb loudly against his skull. He
became dizzy and his eyes closed, fire flooding through his brain into his
eyeballs. When he reopened his eyes he knew they glowed with fire.

Tiyy had advanced to within three feet of him, and her body was flushed,
instinctively responding to his heat with its own.

The helmet tried to turn away from her, but Gath would not let it, and
watched her warily.

“I am amazed,” she said quietly, “that the man inside you still refuses to
submit to the helmet. I would not have believed it possible if I was not seeing
it with my own eyes. But I am glad.” Her words purred with pleasure and power.
“I have never made a Lord of Destruction from a man before. There was never one
strong enough. Until now.” Gath thrashed violently against his chains, flames
shooting from the eye slits, and Schraak had to sit down to keep from falling.
But Tiyy did not move or flinch, only waited until he sagged helplessly in
place, his chest heaving and dripping sweat and blood.

Slowly she circled him, holding the two vials in one hand, touching his arm
and back and wrist with gentle fingertips, then reappeared facing him. His blood
glistened on her thumb. She studied it thoughtfully and tasted it, then said,
“It is written in the scrolls of the ancients that one day a man will walk the
earth with the power to bring down nations and raise up mountains, to remake the
earth until north is south and the deserts are blue seas. A man of such courage
and strength that where he walks the legends will walk.” Her voice became
breathless with anticipation. “A man greater than kings and magicians who is
made from both good and evil… a man whose heart’s love is capable of bringing
the White Veshta back to life, and whose seed of lust can make the chosen of the
Master of Darkness into the Black Veshta incarnate.”

He hung silently in place, glaring.

“Do you know what that would mean? Have you any conception of the measure of
power such a man could unleash?” She shook her head. “I doubt it. They are
beyond even my imagination. But the man I can imagine, and measure… and you
are that man.”

Gath laughed at her, small and bitter and short. She smiled in reply. “Save
your laughter, large one. We will soon see which one of us is right. You, the
next Lord of Destruction, or me, the Nymph Queen of Pyram.” Her smile sank back
into her savagely beautiful face. “You see, I am the chosen of the Lord of
Death.”

Cold terror ran through Gath’s veins, and he thrashed against his chains.

Once more she waited until his strength was wasted, then used her teeth to
uncork each of the vials, spitting the corks on the floor. With black light
spearing from the vials, she lifted them to his face, saying, “Raise your head.”

Despite Gath’s efforts, the helmet obeyed, and she emptied a vial into the
mouth slit. He gulped and choked, trying to reject the bitter taste, but a heat
rushed through him and the helmet took control. It whipped his head about in a
frenzy of hunger, then held still as she poured the second vial into him. The
helmet jerked and drops of the thick black wine spattered and sizzled on its hot
metal. She stepped back, tossing the vials aside, and the helmet leaned for her,
its flames licking hungrily at her body.

She laughed throatily. “You see who he wants now, Schraak?” She untied her
scanty apron and dropped the leopard skin to the floor. Slowly, flames flickered
under her walnut flesh, centering in her breasts and groin, then spread
throughout her body until she looked like molten fire sheathed in the body of a
woman.

Gath writhed against his chains, reaching for her. Fire consumed his eyes,
and he could scent the heady perfume of her youth and heat, but then it became
vague and distant, and she seemed suddenly immense, a cloud of undulating flesh
that pressed into him. He felt as if he stood atop a mountain, and that the
mountain was his own body. It was moving beneath him like quaking earth. Utterly
beyond control.

“It’s no use, you are mine now.” Her voice whispered the words, and the
whisper was deafening. Then she snapped, “The locks, worm. Quickly!”

The small man bolted to his feet and unlocked the chains. Gath could feel his
mountainous body drop free and land solidly on the floor. The noise and impact
dizzied him, and when his head cleared he saw Tiyy’s smile as she whispered to
the small man, “Don’t bother with the chains! Get out!”

The little man did not have to be told twice, and was out the door before she
finished, slamming it behind him.

The Nymph Queen undulated like fire, and the mountain moved. Chains rattled
through iron loops in the wall, coming free, and clanged to the floor. His arms
reached for her, massive hands spanning her waist, and he hauled her violently
into his arms, the lengths of chain flailing and clanging against wall and
floor. The mountain had more strength than his imagination could have fashioned,
and the heat inside it was volcanic. Impatient. Fire wanting to mate with fire.

“Yes! Yes!” she groaned. “Now! Now!”

He crushed her to him, and her legs straddled his hips, the fires merging as
she took him standing, in the manner of the Dark Goddess, consuming and
defeating him in the manner water defeats the sword.

Then his mind was gone, and there was only bone and muscle and sensation.

PYRAM

T
he four riders emerged from the hills side by side, crested the ridge
together and simultaneously reined up in the shadows of a spreading oak. Their
tunics and cloaks had been redesigned by the hard night trail, and were
decorated by thorns, dust and sweat. Their faces were vivid with the rouge of
exhaustion and drawn with reckless smiles. Mouths were parted, lips cracked, and
the lids of their eyes were red against bloodshot whites. But they sat erect in
their saddles, as if with one backbone, like actors eager to battle tempest,
fire and flood for center stage.

Brown John was in the middle. Cobra was on his right, and Jakar, with Robin
riding behind him, on his left.

Seagulls floated against the grey sky overhead, silently working the cool sea
breezes. The same breezes ruffled their cloaks, cooled hot cheeks and filled
heaving lungs with heady satisfaction.

The coast road waited not a quarter of a mile dead ahead, and a hundred
strides beyond it shallow waves tumbled out of a dark blue sea. Scattered shafts
of golden light pierced the dark cloud cover, stabbing the seascape. It beckoned
like sparkling silver coins scattered on a blanket of blue-black water.

The Inland Sea.

The riders shifted in their saddles, each eager to rush forward and begin the
knockabout with bang and outcry, but like seasoned performers, remained in place
and studied their stage.

Awed by the immense body of the ocean, Robin sighed. “It’s so big… so
beautiful.”

Brown John scolded her with his eyes, reminding her that they were not here
to play a scene of awe and wonder, but one of deadly stealth and raw violence,
and she nodded her apology.

They rode forward, and the tree cover siding the road thinned like parting
curtains exposing bald shoreline, and an ever-widening vista of untamed nature.

The
bukko
had never seen bodies of earth and sky and water of such
size or stark contrast. Here was a stage on which gods could roughhouse and war,
where goddesses passed like mysteries behind watery veils and sunbeams. He
reined up again and sighed with wonder. But no one scolded him, and the others
stopped at his sides.

The dark turbulent waters and the verdant greens of tropical growth on the
far shore spoke of portentous mysteries, and the black castle standing on the
hunched back of the huge grey rock rising out of the sea was a chilling spokesman of imminent doom.

“That’s Pyram,” Jakar said evenly. “I saw it from the opposite shore, but
there’s no mistaking it.”

The northern walls and towers were dark ruins, and tumbled roughly to the
south where towers stood erect amid moats, and valiant and salient walls. They
were topped by crenellated parapets, their long black bodies hiding whatever
monstrosities might dwell behind them.

The rock supporting the castle was bald at the top, and descended to thickets
of carob bean, cork oak and wild olive, then to carpets of heather, rosemary and
lavender. Flurries of ravens, warblers and wrens swept over thicket and brush,
and swooped down the sheer faces of the cliffs past bright patches of
snapdragons, periwinkle and broom flowers lining the runnels in the rock.

The landscape approaching the castle was low and rugged, and swept in a
crescent toward the northern end of the huge rock. A dirt road turned off the
coast road, wandered through the rough ground and crossed a shallow bridge of
land joining the continent to the rock. There it meandered up the gentle western
slope toward the southern end of the castle, and entered it via a port of arms,
an outwork which bisected the valiant wall. Flags waved on the wall, and tiny
shadows moved along it, sentries of the castle garrison. But the coast road and
the road to the castle were empty tongues of dark dirt waiting for something
edible to suck into the teeth of the castle.

A fog was drifting out of the Inland Sea. Its tremulous body was rising in
concealing mists around the base of the sheer cliffs at the north end of the
rock where waves crashed at the mouths of shadowed caves. Its vaporous fingers
probed at the shore, reaching as far as the coast road and promising to reach
further. Above the castle, the overhanging cloud tumbled on the wind, falling in
billowing folds over towers and ruins like a heavy mourning garment.

The
bukko
smiled with patient expectation. “We will wait for the fog
to cover us.”

They dismounted, distributed the last of their water and provisions, then sat
down and watched the fog roll in. When the thick mists reached all the way
inland to cover their bodies so they could not see ten feet in front of them,
they remounted and moved toward Pyram.

Cobra led them.

Looking warily into the dense concealing fog, Jakar said, “I don’t like it.
Why should things suddenly become easy?”

“Patience, lad,” Brown John said. “We can use all the luck that comes our
way.”

They traveled the length of the coast road, only passing an ox-cart and
driver barely visible in the fog, and turned onto the dirt road. Crossing the
narrow bridge of land, they heard distant voices high above on the battlements,
but met no one. At the base of the rock, Cobra silently indicated they should
turn off, and led the party through boulders to the shoreline. There they hid
the horses in a shallow cove, and Brown John and Jakar strapped sword and
crossbow to their backs. They crossed the base of the giant rock for nearly a
mile, until they were well away from the shore and the incoming waves were
drenching them, and stopped.

In front of them, forty feet of sheer cliff plunged into the turbulent surf.
Slick shale. Impassable. At its far side, the waves splashed into the darkness
of a small cave.

Cobra removed her cloak, raised it in a bundle over her head and moved down
into the onrushing water. The others, in like manner, followed. They waded ten
feet further along the base of the cliff, then had to swim the rest of the way.
At the cave, waves tossed them about, and they were banged against boulders
repeatedly before they made the floor of the cave. Scratched and bruised, they
crawled into the shallow opening and lay gasping as they watched Robin’s cloak,
which had been ripped from her grasp, toss fitfully on the frothy waters as it
was slowly dragged out to sea.

The cave was wide but only three feet high, and they had to crawl through
shallows of ebbing and flowing sea water to dry ground. There they wrung out
their clothes, then crawled some more. They moved in the manner Cobra had
instructed them while on the night trail, making as little noise as possible.
The faintest click or thump of falling shale echoed deep into the dark, sinister
body of the rock.

They passed through horizontal tunnels made by sea water and climbed up
through vertical ones made by rain water. Vague daylight, drifting in from side
tunnels, illuminated their passage from time to time, but most of it was spent,
in total darkness. Nevertheless, Cobra led the way with assurance.

Brown John smiled unseen as he followed her, his hand maintaining contact
with her shoulder. She had told him she had been raised in Pyram, and that as a
young girl her constant dream had been to one day possess the sacred jewels.
Consequently, she had spent much of her youth crawling through each tunnel and
passage until she found the dungeon cell in which the jewels were held. But they
had been heavily guarded at all times, and she had never seen them.

Now, as they moved deeper and deeper into the rock, Cobra’s pace became
strong and quick with growing excitement.

The air became hot and humid, and Brown John and the others began to sweat
and gasp. They began a long descent through a narrow tunnel, and at the bottom,
a cool sea breeze wafted over them. Here Cobra stopped and turned to Brown John.
Her voice was quiet but rough, almost wild with anticipation.

“We’re almost there. From here on, the passage is narrow. We’ll have to
crawl.”

The
bukko
passed the word, and they lowered themselves to the moist
rock flooring, breathing deeply.

Cobra said, “Hurry now,” and began to squirm through a ragged hole in the
rock.

Brown John, Robin and Jakar followed.

Puddles of sea water shared the floor of the tunnel with them, and clusters
of stinking sea urchin and tiny crabs. They were pinched and bitten, then
emerged in a sizable tide pool and stood gasping with relief.

Waves crashed through a tunnel at the opposite end of the pool, their foaming
spilling bodies lit by torches guttering in wall embrasures behind the ledge on
which they had emerged. It spanned one side of the pool. Through the green
water, they could see the whitish bottom of the pool, and a jagged hole in its
floor opening onto shadowy depths. An iron-grilled door was positioned beside
the hole; it was attached to chains which could pull it over the hole, sealing
it. Whitish scrape marks showed in the floor where it had been recently dragged.

Robin shuddered, and Jakar and the
bukko
unstrapped their weapons. The
group put their dry cloaks back on and followed Cobra across the ledge. An
entrance tunnel opened off the ledge at the far edge. They followed it half its
length and stopped, pressing their bodies into shadows.

Torches flickered at the opposite end, and shadowed figures passed in their
light.

When the figures vanished, Cobra hurriedly led the group into a side passage.
It led to a stairwell, and they ascended it, moving quickly now despite the
difficulty. The stone stairs were alternately dark and illuminated by flickering
oil lamps set in brass embrasures. The sounds of the ocean grew fainter and
fainter far below. At the top, the stairwell opened on a horizontal tunnel. It
was low and narrow and undulating, offering no view of what waited at the end.

They followed Cobra through it, almost running now, and it opened onto a
large cave with dusty walls of dense black earth rising thirty feet high. Crawl
holes pockmarked the curving walls, and the mouth of an arched tunnel was set
high to one side. A staircase descended from it, following the curved wall,
growing wider and wider, then turned into the cave, ending at its center. The
staircase faced a wide polished wall of obsidian blocks. The black rock
glittered with flickering orange light from a large oil lamp hanging from the
center of the ceiling.

Brown John looked about uncertainly, then at Cobra. Her face was white, and
her mouth hung open. She was gasping, teetering in place. Then she staggered to
the obsidian wall and moved along it, mumbling incoherently, and frantically
exploring it with outstretched arms and probing fingers. When she turned to him,
her voice shook with heedless panic.

“It was here! I know it was! The dungeon cell was right here! Behind this
wall. But it’s been sealed up!”

“Are you sure this is the right cave?” the
bukko
asked.

“Of course!” she gasped. “But it’s walled up!”

Brown John, Robin and Jakar shared an alarmed glance, and edged toward the
wall, studying it. Sudden fear had drawn their flesh tight over their jaws, and
their bodies were unsteady on feet spread well apart.

“You’re absolutely certain?” asked Brown John, not wanting to hear the
answer.

“Yes! Yes!” Cobra groaned. “The door was right here!” She pounded the rock
wall. “Right in the middle!”

Jakar turned to the
bukko.
“Let’s go, Brown. I smell a trap.”

The old Grillard lifted a hand telling him to wait. He could not bring
himself to agree so quickly. He looked around again, then wished he hadn’t. The
clang of iron bars rang throughout the room, and they swung around facing the
sound. An iron-barred door had descended over the entrance tunnel, blocking
their retreat to the tide pool. Behind it stood a small man in a breechclout,
oozing fetid slime.

Robin recoiled into Jakar’s arms, and Cobra gasped, “Schraak!”

The worm man bowed in reply from behind the bars and laughed.

Cobra staggered behind Brown John and clung to his back, staring over his
shoulder in shock and terror. “No. Noooooo!”

“Oh, yes,” Schraak said, and lifted a thick finger, pointing up at the top of
the staircase.

Their heads lifted, and their eyes widened.

A fog was drifting out of the arched doorway at the top of the stairs and
gathering against the ceiling. Then shafts of black light struck through it, and
it billowed, filling the ceiling, threatening to fall on them.

The four backed up, holding each other, and bumped against the obsidian wall.
Shaking her head, Cobra collapsed against the
bukko.

“What’s happening?” Robin moaned. “What is it?”

“A trap,” Jakar said, as if describing nothing more startling than a stage
device. “It’s all been a trap. The fog and the black cloud above the castle were
put there deliberately, just like the fog we’re looking at now, to make us
believe we could enter unseen.”

“But how?” Robin pleaded.

“Black Veshta,” Brown John said in a whisper, and Cobra shuddered agreement.

Robin looked at the
bukko,
trembling with confusion, then looked back
up into the billowing fog and screamed shrilly, sinking to her knees.

Flaming eyes had appeared within the dark mist, and now the horned helmet
emerged from it. It resided on the head of a huge man clothed only in a black
loincloth and boots. The body seemed to be Gath of Baal’s, but the carriage was
brutish and bent by demonic appetites. Beastly. The Death Dealer as the Master
of Darkness had originally conceived of him, as a Lord of Destruction.

Jakar and Brown John both stepped in front of Robin protectively, their
weapons ready.

A rough growl instantly ripped out of the helmet, and the beast’s body
heaved, with the helmet blasting flames through the thinning mist.

Jakar and the
bukko
raised their arms, and the helmet’s fire speared
down across the room, singeing their garments and flesh, driving them away from
Robin. The flames promptly abated, and the helmet hung low between the ponderous
shoulders, content to glare down at Robin with impatient hunger.