The Keep of Fire (67 page)

Dakarreth’s smile deepened, an expression of deep and endless mystery. He drew close. Maybe the Necromancer’s body was not truly alive, but all the same a clean, sharp smell rose from him along with waves of heat.

Dakarreth ran his fingers lightly over Beltan’s chest and stomach, then he leaned close, encircling the knight with powerful arms. Through the kilt, Beltan felt Dakarreth’s hardness press against him, and he felt himself stir in answer. Dakarreth’s lips touched his own, hot and stinging with salt, and a moan rose from deep within Beltan. He did not want this.

No, that wasn’t true. He
did
want it. It had been so long—so many cold, lonely, and bloody years—since he had given himself to another. Perhaps this was what he truly needed. Not death, but release. With fierce strength he returned Dakarreth’s embrace.

Dakarreth pulled back. “Yes, Sir Beltan! It has been too long since I have known the pleasure of mortal flesh given to me willingly.”

Beltan was a strong man, but he could not resist as Dakarreth pushed him downward, bent him back, and laid him upon the marble bench: a sacrificial calf on a temple altar. The stone was hot and slick against Beltan’s back.

Dakarreth leaned over him, pressing his fingers
into the flesh of Beltan’s chest, digging in toward his heart. There was pain. Much pain.

“Now, Sir Beltan,” Dakarreth said, his perfect face a mask of rapture, “be transformed!”

Beltan grasped the pain, held it, and let it clear his mind of the heat and torpor. Dakarreth was a god, yes, and beautiful. But he was evil, and Beltan would never serve him. In a single movement, Beltan reached into his kilt, pulled out the dagger, and drove the blade deep into Dakarreth’s shoulder.

Dakarreth’s eyes flew wide. With a cry he stumbled back. Beltan sat up, grinning. So gods could be harmed after all.

But he’s not a god, Beltan. Not yet. That’s why there’s still a chance
.

His grin crumbled as Dakarreth’s molten eyes turned on him, shriveling his soul to nothing.

“You have betrayed me!” With his right hand, Dakarreth reached up and pulled the knife from his shoulder. Blood gushed forth. He cast the dagger aside, then brushed his fingers across the wound. The river of blood slowed, then reversed, flowing back into the wound. When Dakarreth lowered his hand, all traces of both blood and wound were gone. His flesh was golden and perfect again.

Beltan gripped the marble bench, knowing the end had come. At least, if nothing else, he had gone out fighting.

Dakarreth’s voice was a venomous hiss. “I should have known you would turn against me. But then, you are skilled at treachery, are you not, Beltan son of Beldreas?”

A new dread filled Beltan. “What do you mean?”

Dakarreth drew near. His face was still beautiful, but it was terrible to gaze upon now: the face of a wrathful god. “You yet quest for your father’s murderer, is that not so, Sir Beltan? Yes, you seek the one who slew your father, old, strong King Beldreas—the
one who stuck a knife in his back like a coward and ran. Is that not so?” Dakarreth knelt before the bench. “Consider your quest ended.”

“You!” Beltan said, gasping in the wet air like a drowning man. “It was you who killed my father!”

The Necromancer laughed. His fingers moved across Beltan’s chest in a mockery of a caress.

“No, my good knight. It was not I who slew Beldreas. It was you.”

This was madness. Beltan didn’t want to listen. He turned his head, but he could not close his ears. Dakarreth’s fingers found the ragged scar on Beltan’s left side—the barely healed wound he had received from the
feydrim
at the Rune Gate—and danced along it.

“When the Pale King awoke,” the Necromancer said softly, “he bid me to sow strife in the Dominions, a task I willingly accepted. And it was so simple. A few whispers in your dreams over a few nights, that is all it took. But then, the mortal mind is so easily shaped.”

Beltan tried to move, but his body was stone. “No,” he said in a ragged whisper.

“But you know it is true, Sir Beltan. Have you not seen it in your dreams? Who else could get so close to Beldreas without arousing the old king’s guard but his own bastard son?”

Dakarreth’s fingers pressed against the scar, and pain coursed through Beltan’s body along with terrible and perfect understanding. A vision flashed before his eyes, one he had seen in countless dreams: a hand slipping away from the hilt of a bloody knife. His own hand.

“No!”

Dakarreth’s laughter filled his skull. “Yes, Sir Beltan. See the fruit of your treachery. Watch yourself as you murder your own father.”

Beltan screamed. Like knives of steel, the Necromancer’s fingers dug into his scar, ripping the wound open again as blood and memories spilled forth.

Grace stared, unable to move, as Master Eriaun lurched into the high tower chamber. The runespeaker’s hands were black and curled inward like claws, and cooked bits of flesh peeled from the blistered, oozing mask of his face.

What had happened to Eriaun? Was it the Burning Plague? No, his eyes were not black and empty, but instead brown and blazing with mad light. It had been fire—the fire of the rune Travis had turned on him. But his body should have been dead. It
smelled
dead. How then was he alive?

“My master was right,” Eriaun said in a pleasant tone that was all the more unnerving. “He suspected you would be up to some bit of foolishness, Lady Melia. And here you are, right on cue.”

The lady’s amber eyes flashed. “It is Dakarreth who is the fool. Even as a god, he was a petty and sniveling brat. I see little has changed in two thousand years.”

A shock jolted Grace. Maybe she had the answer to the question of Eriaun’s condition after all. Was not his master a Necromancer—a death wizard? She clutched Tira’s shoulders. How could they kill someone who wasn’t even alive?

Eriaun flicked a finger, and the door swung shut behind him. There was a grinding sound as the lock turned. “There,” the runespeaker said, his ragged lips slurring the words, “now we will not be disturbed.”

Travis stepped forward, past Melia and Aldeth, gripping the runestaff. His face was hard in a way
Grace had never seen before, his gray eyes solemn behind his spectacles. He looked strong. No, that wasn’t it.

He looks noble, Grace
.

“I stopped you once, Eriaun.
We
stopped you. And we can do it again.”

“Can you, runelord? Can you really?” Eriaun lumbered closer. “Burning has made me so much stronger. It is the nature of fire, you see, to sublimate that which is soft and frail; and to temper and purify what remains. I do not think you will find me so easily dismissed this time.”

Motion caught Grace’s eye, then she quickly forced her gaze away, so as not to betray him. While Eriaun spoke, his eyes fixed on Travis, Aldeth had backed away and circled around. Even then the Spider approached Eriaun from behind, his boots silent against the floor. From a fold of his gray cloak, he drew a slim stiletto. In a motion too fast to be anything but a blur, he brought the dagger down and drove it into the base of Eriaun’s neck. Grace could hear the wet sound as metal parted flesh and sank deep into the runespeaker’s body.

Eriaun’s eyes flew wide, and he stiffened. Was that it, then? Did even this thing need a spine connected to a brain in order to function?

No. A shriek emanated from Eriaun’s open mouth, shrill and inhuman as a siren. It seemed impossible his shriveled hands could move so quickly, but in one motion he grabbed the stiletto, pulled it from his neck in a gush of black blood, then turned and drove it into the center of Aldeth’s chest. Aldeth’s mouth opened in an expression of astonishment. His eyes fluttered, and he stumbled backward against a wall.

“Oh,” he said softly.

The Spider slid down to the floor, then his eyes shut as he slumped forward and was still.

Grace pushed Tira behind her and started to move
toward Aldeth—she had to help the Spider, to see if he yet lived—then stopped at a look from Eriaun.

“No more tricks, my pets,” he hissed. “If you submit to me now, perhaps I will show you mercy.”

Melia raised her arms. “We shall never submit to the likes of you, corpse.” A blue corona ignited around her, dancing along the outlines of her slender body.

“Oh, I think you shall, Great Lady.”

From a pocket of his filthy robe, Eriaun drew out an object. Crimson light welled between his clenched fingers. Melia gasped, and the blue corona surrounding her flickered. She took a step back as both Grace and Travis gaped at her.

Eriaun’s ragged lips pulled back in a grin. “What’s the matter, Great Lady? Is something amiss?”

The corona dimmed and vanished. Melia lifted a hand to her throat. “What … what is that thing?”

“You mean this?”

Eriaun unfolded his fingers, revealing an orb of clear crystal on his palm. At the center of the orb shone a hot spark of light, so bright Grace had to avert her eyes or be blinded. Melia cried out softly and stumbled back.

“Does it bother you, Great Lady?” Eriaun laughed. “But then, the Great Stones ever disagreed with you and your kind, did they not? So weak all of you were.”

Grace spoke despite her fear. “Is that … Krondisar?”

Again Eriaun laughed, a wet sound. “No, my pet. It is merely a single grain of the Great Stone, removed by my master, and bound within this sphere. A gift, it was—a bit of light to comfort me in dark times.”

He lifted the orb high. Melia staggered and sank to her knees, her hands clutched to her head.

Grace’s body went rigid.
Do something, Grace. Touch the Weirding and do something
.

But how could she? The shadow that lurked between her and the web of the Weirding was more horrible to her than even Eriaun. She clutched Tira and did not move. Eriaun lurched toward Melia, gripping the orb before him. The lady moaned.

Travis interposed himself between Eriaun and Melia. “Leave her alone.”

“Get out of my way!” the runespeaker snarled.

He thrust the orb toward Travis, but Travis didn’t flinch.

“Move, runelord, or I will burn you with runes!” Eriaun stretched out his other charred hand.

Travis bowed his head over his staff, and panic shredded Grace’s heart. Was he just going to let Eriaun kill him? Then a queer smile touched his lips, and he nodded, as one who was listening.

“No, Master Eriaun,” he said, lifting his head. “It’s time you finished what you began.”

Before the runespeaker could react, Travis lifted the runestaff and touched the tip to the orb in Eriaun’s outstretched hand. The staff flared blue, then Travis turned and cast it aside even as it burst apart in a spray of splinters. Grace turned her head from the blast, then looked back.

Eriaun stood unharmed, and he laughed. “Poor runelord. Your staff is no match for the—”

His words faltered as, with a crystalline sound, the orb cracked in half on his hand. Free of its prison, the crimson spark contained within danced on his palm.

“It’s so beautiful!” Eriaun whispered.

Then his words became a scream as the spark expanded into a miniature sun. The runespeaker stiffened, his body becoming a pillar of flame. Grace turned away, shielding Tira with her body. Heat roasted her back—

—then was gone.

The echo of Eriaun’s shriek faded into silence. Slowly, Grace turned around. Travis helped Melia to
her feet. The lady was pale, and she still held a hand to her brow, but the pain was gone from her expression. Of Eriaun and the orb there was no trace save a scorch mark on the stone floor.

Grace shook her head. “What happened to the shard of Krondisar?”

“It is gone,” Melia said. “Consumed with Eriaun, I believe.”

A motionless figure caught Grace’s eyes. She left Tira, dashed across the chamber, and knelt beside Aldeth’s fallen form. Two fingers pressed to his neck revealed that he lived—his pulse was faint but steady. The stiletto had fallen from his chest, and she probed the wound with precise motions. It was not deep. His sternum had deflected the worst of the blow, and while he had lost some blood, the flow had nearly stopped.

She jerked her head up at a pounding from the other side of the door.

“Stand back,” Travis said. “I’ll bind it shut.”

Grace closed her eyes, then opened them again. For a fleeting moment she had glimpsed them before she had had to let go of the Touch—three shining forms in the web of the Weirding.

“No,” she said, standing. “Open it.”

She met Travis’s eyes. He nodded, then moved to the door.

“Urath,”
he spoke, and the door swung inward. Grace breathed a sigh as three familiar figures stepped through.

Melia rushed forward. “Falken!”

The bard caught the lady in a fierce embrace. Grace gasped as she found Lirith’s arms around her, and while she wasn’t certain, she thought she even saw a momentary grin cross Durge’s face as he gripped Travis’s arms. Then they gathered in a circle in the center of the chamber, Tira at the middle.

“Where’s Beltan?” Travis said.

Falken shook his head. “I don’t know. He left a message for us, telling us where to find you. I thought he’d be here.”

Grace clenched her jaw. This was bad news—she was certain of it. But they had other matters to discuss. In quick words they explained what had happened in the days since Falken, Durge, and Lirith had left Spardis.

Anger and sorrow shone in Falken’s eyes as he held Melia tight. “I nearly lost you.”

She leaned her head against his chest. “Never, dearest one. It was for you that I came back.”

Lirith returned from the edge of the chamber. Grace saw that Aldeth now lay peacefully on his cloak.

“He sleeps now,” the witch said. “I do not believe he will die.”

Grace met Lirith’s mysterious brown eyes.
Thank you
. She wasn’t certain whether she spoke the words or not, but Lirith nodded all the same.

“Now what do we do?” Durge said in his rumbling voice. “We have not yet found the Stone.”

“It’s not here,” Grace said.

“No. There’s one place it still might be.”

They turned toward Travis. He had opened a narrow side door she had not seen before. Behind was the beginning of a flight of steps.