Lady of Poison (27 page)

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 elfs 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.”

^RfGSTS

;schar 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.

The cleric yelled, “Queen Abiding, I release thee! Come, and serve he who gives you freedom!”

Things happened all at once. Eschar’s eyes widened as the import of Marrec’s words penetrated his consciousness.

Ususi yelled “Marrec, you fool.”

The crystal sphere in the cleric’s grasp shattered, sending a spray of ice in all directions.

That which had been caught in the center of the crystal remained, hovering, a blot of nothing the size of a beetle, a breath of winter cold expanded, chilling all.

Eschar mouthed a curse whose vileness surpasses mortal ability to comprehend. Despite his ferocity, he seemed frightened, then he vanished.

The hovering blot expanded, doubling, tripling, quadrupling it size in under a second. It rippled outward and upward exultantly, growing in height and width and dimension until it was at least as large as the white dome over which it hovered. The plunging temperature proclaimed winter’s arrival.

The Queen Abiding was loose.

Marrec, looking into the void of evil above him, said, “Your tormentor flees. Get him.”

Tendrils of darkness instantly grew downward from the hovering mass, reaching for the area where the horned demon stood a few seconds earlier. When the tendrils reached the vacated space, they continued reaching, but not in any dimension Marrec was capable of viewing.

The tendrils retracted. Eschar popped back into existence, tendrils wrapped about his straining torso. The horned demon screamed in defiance.

The pleasant female voice of the queen spoke from the darkness. It said, “I told you you’d pay for your effrontery, Eschar.”

Eschar craned his head back and belched forth a thread of seeking flame, which probed like a fiery lance into the darkness’ underbelly.

The bonds of darkness surrounding Eschar loosened. Taking advantage of the slackened grip, the demon struggled mightily and managed to escape the bonds completely.

Marrec, only a step away from the struggle, uttered, “No.”

He stabbed Justlance into the horned demon’s abdomen. Eschar flinched in pain but tried to make good his escape, ignoring the cleric’s bold attack. The demon began to sprint toward the edge of the cavern.

Eschar made about ten strides before the darkness rippled then ballooned in size again. In the blink of an eye it inflated across the entire roof of the cavern, rose a storm cloud of night. Then darkness fell. Marrec couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face. All was cold and utterly quiet. When the darkness lifted a heartbeat later, Eschar was gone.

Elowen watched with unbelieving eyes as Marrec called forth the sea of hovering darkness. When the void consumed Eschar, she was mollified, but then she realized that the Queen Abiding must be a far more potent force even than the horned demon to have eliminated Eschar so casually. Elowen gripped Dymondheart’s hilt, determined to fight to the last, if that’s what was required.

The cleric was gazing up at the roiling bottom of the darkness that shrouded the cavern’s upper reaches. He was talking. What was Marrec thinking?

Marrec said, “I have set you loose from your confinement, yet I require your service. By the token which last I grasped, aid me on my quest. I must face the Rotting Man. You must help me.”

Ususi yelled, “Don’t bargain with her!”

The darkness roiled then stilled. Another strand reached from the lowering belly of the Queen Abiding. The black tendril probed the ground near where Victoricus had melted. Where the black wisp probed, dark liquid was drawn out of the ground, freezing as it did so. In no time, their demonic aide was reconstituted.

“Victoricus will lead you to the child you lost,” spoke

the Queen Abiding, as unperturbed as ever. “I sense she is moving toward the surface.”

Elowen studied Victoricus, who tittered. The demon didn’t seem particularly uncomfortable at its destruction and subsequent restoration.

Marrec pressed, “That is a good start, but listen …” The cleric licked his lips. Elowen knew then that the cleric was exceedingly nervous. “I held the token. I asked for your service. I would like your direct aid against the Talontyr himself.”

The Queen Abiding responded instantly, “Don’t press your hold over me, human. It is tenuous. Oh, so fragile…” A tendril of darkness dropped and caressed Marrec’s face.

“I help you because I have scores to settle. The way I see it, you are my agent against those who have done me wrong. Look, I’m free, and Eschar’s essence slowly digests within me. You have been useful.”

The queen continued, “Yet I also have a score to settle with the Rotting Man. The pain he visited upon me when he briefly held my token, ignorant even of its power, is something that must be repaid, and here you are, all set to go against him.”

Marrec nodded, said, “You’ll help us?”

“One last time may you call on my aid. If you survive these mazes of ancient betrayal, you may yet come to the court of the Talontyr. That’s when I will come to you, should you ask.”