Michael A. Stackpole (31 page)

1 heard a hiss behind me and spun to face one of the largest B
harashadi
I had yet seen. He looked at me and laughed, then hissed something i took to be a command. The Chademons broke off their attack on my companions and moved to surround me from one side, while the other Chademons in the corridor cut off that route of escape. I kept my sword in a guard and watched the B
harashadi
warrior study the steaming blood dripping down over the blade.

Behind me my companions shut and barred the doors to their sanctuary. As I slowly turned a circle to keep the Chademons at bay, 1 saw the door to Roarke’s infirmary still closed, but two smaller
Bharashadi
were heading for it. As last I knew Cruach had been left to guard Roarke, I figured the first sorcerer through the door would have quite a surprise waiting for him.

The big
Bharashadi
crackle-hissed. “You are a virgin from Wallfar. Your flesh will be sweet.”

I turned around to face him. “And I will drink your blood before you taste my flesh.” I reached up with my left hand and pulled my face mask away. “Before this night is done, you will wish you had my face on a
vindictxvara.”
1 looked around at the other
Bharashadi,
and they looked at me with what I can only imagine was awe at the audacity of my boast.

Their surprise bought me a couple more seconds of life, allowing me to see the pair of B
harashadi
sorcerers open the door to Roarke’s infirmary. Cruach’s leap bowled the first magicker over, and I saw purple blood geyser onto the wall as the hound ripped his teeth free of the sorcerer’s throat. Cruach then charged back into the infirmary after the second one. I heard a scream, then a thunderous, roiling ball of red-gold fire blasted back out the door and up through the roof.

As flaming bits of rafters and sharp fragments of roof tile started to rain down, 1 struck at my distracted enemies. My first thrust punched through one Chademon’s belly. I yanked the blade free into a crosscut slash that disemboweled a second demon and thought I might even account for a third before one of the others buried an ax in my skull.

I spun, placing my back to the gap I had opened in the
Bharashadi
circle, in hopes of catching one of the Chademons coming at my back. One was, but not under his own power.

He stumbled toward me, his chest a ruin because of the emerald hoof that had kicked through him as easily as if he was dry-rot wood.

The Emerald Horse reared up and neighed defiantly, then slammed both hooves down, crushing tiles beneath them. Behind him, strewn along the corridor, 1 saw broken and dying
Bharashadi,
and yet the only blood on the jewel stallion came from their wounds. The Chademons in the courtyard melted away from him like night before the dawn.

Without a second thought 1 tangled the fingers of my left hand in his mane and leaped onto his broad back. His body felt warm and soft, as though it were living tissue not stone. I braced myself to be thrown off him, knowing that to lose my place was to die. To my surprise the Emerald Horse did nothing to rid himself of me.

In fact, he did nothing. He remained utterly still, as if he had become a statue.

I gently prodded him with my heels. “Go.”

He remained motionless.

The Chademons began to recover from their fear.

“Get going.” I tightened my knees and gave him some spur.

The Chademons began to creep closer.

“Go. Fly!” I slapped my left hand against his neck. “Fly, you stupid beast, fly like the wind, dammit!”

He reared and spun back toward the corridor with no warning. I barely got my grip on his mane again when he leaped away from the closing
Bfiarasfiadi
warriors. His ears pressed flat against his head, and with me hunkered down with my head along his neck, he raced back through the mansion. His hooves struck sparks from the stones as he galloped out into the courtyard. Faster and faster he ran, faster than any horse had ever run before. The rushing air made my eyes water, blurring the vision of broken bodies, burning demons, and crushed stone outside the mansion.

On he raced, acting in full accord with what I had commanded. His long strides carried us the length of the outer-courtyard, scattering laggard Black Shadows. 1 laughed defiantly at them, then my laughter died in my throat.

The horse’s speed increased.

The distance to the edge of the plateau shrunk.

I pulled back on his mane. “Whoa, stop!”

Neighing defiantly, my mount left me no doubt as to who was the master in our relationship. At once magnificent and terrifying, the Emerald Horse galloped off the edge of the plateau and carried me away with him into the night.

_I

realized we were actually flying when I no longer heard hoofbeats. The Emerald Horse kept galloping, but with each motion we rose higher and higher, as if he was running on air. I clung to his back and gently tried to steer him with pressure from my knees. He responded, and we slowly turned back around in a lazy spiral that took us up above First Stop Mansion.

The fireball that had killed Roarke had started the whole south wing burning. In its light I could see long shadows cast by
Bfiarasfiadi
warriors gathered around the fountain, and 1 took heart that I could see damned few of them. Another fire had started burning in the north tower, and scattered around it as if they were embers were the flaming
Bfiarasfiadi
bodies Nagrendra’s magick had destroyed.

His loss—while no more tragic than Aleix’s or Xoayya’s deaths—was a great blow to our mission.

With Taci being our only remaining magick user, and she only being able to bring one other person with her to Castel Payne, we stood little or no chance of even getting to see Fialchar.
Given that she is locked away in the Gorecrag stronghold, there is no way we can even contemplate trying to reach Castel Payne until dawn.

Then it occurred to me where 1 truly was. I squeezed my knees together and gently tugged back on the Emerald Horse’s mane. “Up there, boy, take me to Castel Payne.”

The horse’s nostrils flared, then his front hooves reached forward as if we were climbing a hill. Up we went on a steep angle. The Emerald Horse’s hooves sparked off the very summit of Gorecrag, then he leaped up into the void, and we sailed up to the castle floating in the air.

As he carried me toward it, 1 almost ordered him to turn away. It was completely stupid for me to try to face Fialchar alone. I had always counted on being part of the group that visited him, but 1 always saw Kit or Roarke taking the bit in his mouth and dealing with Lord Disaster.

“But they’re not here, so that’s no longer an option.” The idea of facing Fialchar terrified me, but less so than the idea of the Black Shadows resurrecting their dead. If the stories of my father and Fialchar having reached a truce to let my father destroy the
Bharashadi
were true— and I believed they were—then approaching him to continue that alliance of convenience was certainly the way to enlist his aid in stopping Packkiller.

We landed inside the ruins of the siege wall, and I slid from the Emerald Horse’s back before the jeweled castle. My legs nearly collapsed when they touched the ground, and the evil I had sensed earlier pummeled me. I felt nauseous, but 1 refused to vomit. I leaned against the Emerald Horse as 1 steadied myself, then patted him affectionately on the neck. “Wait for me, please.”

The horse tossed his head once, then locked himself into a statue that was the very picture of equine pride and arrogance. Despite where I was, i had to laugh, in the broad facet that made up his shoulder 1 saw my reflection. I flaked off some of the dried blood from where my face mask.had been ripped away earlier, then homed my sword in its scabbard and mounted the steps to Fialchar’s lair.

I had no idea what to expect. Though many bards loved to sing of the time when Jhesti the Lost Prince fulfilled his vow to pluck a hair from Lord Disaster’s beard, they never described Castel Payne beyond the basics. Yes, they told how it floated in the air and sparkled like a jewel, but everyone knew that. Somehow I think that even if they made something up about the interior, they could not make it as horrid as I found it.

The castle itself reminded me in many ways of the Imperial Palace. The two buildings had been laid out with utterly different floor plans, but both showed the incredibly high degree of craftsmanship only available to those who could afford to hire the best. In many ways Castel Payne exceeded the palace in beauty because it had been fitted together from massive crystalline blocks, and light flashed from flaws in the stones. Those flaws created pictures locked away and only available to a viewer standing at one place at one time.

On the other hand, the nature of those pictures were what made Castel Payne obscene. Walking through the first corridor, I saw thousands of faces shrieking in terror. The jewels revealed their hearts to be graphic scenes of torture and abominations and crimes I could not have begun to imagine. What made them even worse was that I knew in my heart that each scene 1 saw was not just the depraved imagining of some lunatic artist, but a faithful representation of something that had actually happened.

1 reached my first intersection and realized 1 hadn’t a clue as to where to go or how to find Fialchar. I started across the intersection to continue in the first corridor and immediately felt a great sense of relief. I knew, then, that given the way my flesh crawled in this place, I had made the wrong choice. I turned and walked deeper into the castle despite a voice in the back of my mind screaming that I was a fool.

I shook my head. 1/
the quest
was
supposed to be easy, they would not have given it to someone who is supposed to be a hero.

The Grand Hallway into which 1 stepped had no equal in anything I had seen in the Imperial Palace. The arches above me soared so high that the light sparking from the jewel’s flaws appeared to be stars. The hallway’s far end seemed a day’s journey away, yet the sidewalls pressed me uncomfortably closely. 1 could not reach out and touch them, but they still felt as if they were inching together to crush me between them.

As I walked forward—with each step sublimating the desire to run screaming from this place—I decided this place had to be Fialchar’s monument to himself. Throughout I saw trophies so grotesque they could have made a vulture vomit. One statue, for example, showed a naked Aelven lass caught running happily through a field. The artistry necessary to capture the love of life in her eyes had no equal to my knowledge. The statue displayed her virginal innocence, and I felt the same tightening in my chest that 1 remembered from when 1 learned Marija had gone out with Nob’s grandson.

The statue would have been perfection itself except for the artist’s choice of medium. He had rendered the work in meat—a fact hidden from view except when I came close enough to scare away the flies blanketing it. The pungently sour stench of rotting flesh, on the other hand, was unmistakable and inescapable.

Even more chilling were the huge, single block carvings of people set in the walls between the pillars. They had been carved from unnaturally large chunks of a milky, translucent stone. 1 thought at first it was opal, thereby to mock the Ward Walls. 1 realized that idea came because bleeding up from beneath the stony flesh of the carven figures I saw colors reflective of their skin, hair, and clothing. The statues reached out into the air with hands outstretched as if pleading with me to free them. One looked as if caught in mid-leap, and i could have sworn another shifted position as 1 approached it.

I knew distractions would make it harder for me to force myself onward. I focused on the darkened doorway at the far end of the hall and marched on toward it. As I drew closer it became more and more difficult to move. I felt as if I were caught in a blizzard, fighting both thigh-high snowdrifts and a hammering head wind. 1 gritted my teeth and pushed on, determined that I would not fail after having come so far.

Finally, in the arched doorway, the pressure against me stopped, i felt a moment’s respite in the oppressive sensation of dread and even experienced some elation at having come so far. Then, suddenly, the overwhelming evil hit me again. I do not believe it returned with any more potency than before, but in contrast to my fleeting moment of happiness, it threatened to suck me down into oblivion.

I reached out and touched the jeweled wall. From its cool solidity I drew strength and straightened up. 1
have come too far to be sent running now.
I let my anger power me. 1 adjusted my breastplate and prepared to draw my sword.

I stepped into Fialchar’s inner sanctum.

A thin patina of dust covered everything in the dimly lit room. Double rows of pillars held up a circular gallery. All around the walls of the main floor and the gallery I saw shelves with an incredible number of tomes on them. Some, in sets with like bindings, stood at attention and occupied whole shelves, while other, older books, leaned across gaps onto their neighbors. Some outsize volumes lay flat on a shelf with smaller books piled on top until the shelf itself began to bow under the weight.

Between the pillars i saw a number of small tables with all the things I would have expected to see in the libraries of the finest Imperial households. To my left I saw a chess game very near the end. Beyond it a set of crystal goblets and decanters both showed signs of the wine they had once contained having evaporated, caking them with brown residue. On the right I saw a sideboard with what, beneath the mold, might have been a round of cheese and a loaf of bread. Fuzzy, desiccated grapes sat on another tray that might have been silver had the tarnish been scrubbed away. Beyond that, books lay open on other desks, and a quill pen lay on a half-filled page.