Michael A. Stackpole (38 page)

As Vrasha spun one of his triangular spells to burn through the beast Roarke had conjured up, I knelt and found another sword. An inch or two longer than I preferred, the blade looked stout enough to stand up to one of Kothvir’s blows. At the same time it felt light enough and well balanced enough for me to be able to put it to gOod use against him. He might not wear rank badges, but Kothvir was quite skilled with a blade. My new sword had a good edge, and I knew I would need it because, unlike the
vindictxvara,
my sword would require more than a pinprick to kill Kothvir.

I leaped down to the floor of the cavern and ducked beneath a crosscut slash. Staying low, I lunged at Kothvir, forcing him back. Drawing myself up to the right, I sidestepped and deflected an overhand blow to my left. Disengaging from his blade, I brought the tip of my sword up and through in a weak slash that managed to catch his left shoulder and open a small wound.

Kothvir backed away from me and probed the wound with his left thumb. He sniffed at the blood, then tasted it. He smiled at me. ‘After so long, feeling even this is a joy.” He wiped his hand clean on his chest. “Thank you for reminding me even the most tiny of pests can prove difficult.”

The Chademon drove in, windmilling blows high left and high right. I blocked those 1 could not dodge and actually jumped above one low slash. As I landed, 1 lunged forward and stuck him in the right thigh. Pulling my blade free as he shouted in anger, 1 retreated but did not move quickly enough.

His right arm came around with a backhanded slash that caught me with more flat than edge. Despite the sloppy delivery, it sliced through flesh and muscles over the ribs on my right flank. In addition to opening up my side, the blow landed solidly enough to knock me sprawling and crack ribs. I fought to keep my sword in hand as 1 fell, knowing I would be dead without it.

But
he cut me with a
vindictxvara. I’m
dead already.

Rolling to a seated stop, I clamped my right arm down over the wound. I felt my sweat stinging and burning in the wound. I slid my left hand beneath my sword arm and winced as warm blood oozed between my fingers. I could feel shredded muscles and bone spurs. Breathing hurt because of broken ribs, but that mattered not at all. I had been hit with a
vindictxvara
forged specifically to slay me! I had seen what a mere dagger had done to Tyrchon. Kothvir promised this blade would make me burst into flames. My left hand sought any spark, any hint of unnatural warmth kindling in my chest.
Maybe
I
can smother it.

Kothvir had withdrawn and glanced down at the gash leaking blood over his right leg. He pressed his right hand to the wound as if anointing it with the blood from his shoulder would heal it. When it did not, he wiped his hand across his belly, then looked up at me. “Your last blow was a good one. You are better than I expected. Pity. I smell your blood from here. 1 cut you. Thus ends the story of Cardew, scourge of the Black Shadows.”

He stared at me intently, as if he could make me combust by force of his will alone. I returned his stare, filling it with all the venom 1 could. I determined I would show him no fear, give him no satisfaction. It didn’t matter who I was, or who he thought I was—I was going to die a man.

As I steeled myself against death, I realized I wasn’t dying. I felt no fire in my wound. I felt nothing but the normal stinging ache of a cut and the sharp pain from broken ribs. I’d felt it before, and I knew I’d survived it before. I
may be going to die, but not right at this moment.

I reached up with my left hand and grabbed the edge of the terrace behind me. I got a good grip despite the slippery blood and pulled myself to my feet. “That’s where you’re wrong. 1 am better than you ever dreamed. And I am
not
Cardew.” I waved him forward with my bloody hand. “Come on, Kothvir, we have both outlived our rivalry. Let us end it now.”

He stared at me, confusion swirling through his eyes and setting his face in a snarl. Wiping my left hand on my loincloth, I stalked forward. I could feel blood trickling down my side, but I felt no fear about the wound. I even let him glimpse it, taunting him with it, then I came at him as I had come at Dalt and Geoff and even my grandfather. 1 stole from him the role of executioner and forced him to play the victim.

I feinted high, then slashed low. Kothvir whipped his sword around in a circular parry. 1 pulled my tip back, sliding free of his parry in a hiss of metal, then stabbed forward as his blade passed. My point hit him in the upper chest on the right side, then 1 withdrew—but not far—as he swept his sword back in a late parry.

Wounded and bleeding, are you as strong as Dalt?

Kothvir grunted at the wound, then took a half step forward, placing him well within striking range. He lunged, and I parried. Sliding my sword up along his blade, I locked our hilts. Shoving upward, I drove our blades high, then I twisted my whole body and pirouetted beneath his right arm. His blood-slicked grip surrendered his sword and sent it spinning off into the air. Before it hit the ground, and before he could recover from his lunge because of his wounded leg, I thrust my sword through his armpit, skewering both lungs and his heart.

I released my sword and tried to jump away, but he spun and pitched me across the dais with a swat from his right paw. I hit hard and rolled to a stop on my knees, scraping them the way his claws had scored my chest. Weaponless, I balled my fists and waited for the
Bharasfiadi
to come after me.

Kothvir took one strong step toward me, then staggered and sank back. He slipped in his own violet blood and fell against the dais steps. A hideous cough racked his chest, and his last words pooled into lavender bubbles on his lips. Whatever he said, the magick did not translate for me, but it mattered not. His dying eyes filled with hatred, and 1 got his message.

Between us, the magickers’ duel continued on the dais. Vrasha spun the sceptre into a circle and made a shield against the azure lightning bolt Roarke cast through the staff in his left hand. The two spells mutually annihilated each other in a brilliant burst of white light. Vrasha set himself for another of Roarke’s assaults, then smiled as Roarke gestured with his right hand and a blue bat launched itself at the B
harashadi
sorcerer.

Contemptuously, Vrasha brought the sceptre up in the square motion he had used to stop the magical bird Roarke had created. The cube cage flashed to life, but the bat sailed through the red enclosure and raked its claws across Vrasha’s face. The
Bharashadi
sorcerer screamed and batted at the winged rat with the sceptre. The magical creature sank its fangs into Vrasha’s right hand and tore off a bloody strip of pelt. The Black Shadow screamed in pain and lost his grip on the Fistfire Sceptre.

As it fell to the ground, Roarke leveled the staff at Vrasha Packkiller and murmured, “I want his heart.” Tethered to the staff by a thin thread, a blue claw the size of my hand shot forward, it punched through the sorcerer’s chest, then retracted. Disbelieving, the sorcerer looked down, probed the gaping wound with his hands. His eyes flicked up, then he reached for his still-beating heart.

Roarke smiled. “Allow me.”

The heart burst into flame the second before Roarke stuffed it back into Vrasha’s chest. The
Bharashadi’s
scream ended in fiery jets shooting from his mouth and nostrils. Trailing smoke from face and chest, Vrasha teetered backward and crashed onto the dais.

Beyond him an unsteady Rindik rose up and stepped onto the dais with his sword raised. Before I could move, or Roarke could cast a spell to deal with him, two arrows sank to their fletching in the
Bharashadi
warrior’s chest. 1 looked back up at the tunnel through which Vrasha had come into the cavern. Kit and Osane had already fitted new arrows to their bows while Eirene and Donla let fly at the other
Bharashadi
in the cavern. Two of the twelve drummers toppled from their perches, and the others died rapidly as the rest of our company picked them out from the slowly wakening
Bharashadi
dead.

Once they had eliminated the living threat, our compatriots started to come down toward the dais. I held my hand up to stop them. “No, stay there. We will come out to you. Secure the way.”

1 turned to Roarke, who knelt breathless on the dais. “You knew, didn’t you?”

He smiled at me. “You mean about how no spell from the staff would get through defenses raised by the sceptre? Yes. That’s why I pressed the attack and made Vrasha get careless. He was choosing defensive spells that had no relation to the attacks 1 made on him specifically because the defense didn’t matter. When 1 made my warbat, I did not use the staff, and his defense failed.”

“Not that, Roarke. You knew about Cruach, that Cruach was
my
dog. And about the Emerald Horse and why I knew where the Umbra was.” I swallowed hard. “You knew 1 was Cardew all along.”

Roarke nodded very slowly. “When Jhesti rescued me from Fialchar he took me to where Cruach stood guard over you. He said Fialchar had lured you into a zone where time ran backward, and that you had regressed to the age of two or so. We brought you back to the Empire, leaving only those boots behind for the
Bfiarasfiadi
to fret over.

“About what had happened to you, we told only a few people—Audin, Evadne, your wife Merle, Ethelin, and the Emperor. I think he has since confided in the Warlord. We needed you to become Cardew again, as you had become Cardew once before, so we tried to recreate your training and your life as exactly as we could.”

I stared at him, speechless. “Why?”

“So you could fulfill the prophecy made in the
Chronicles of Farscry.”

“But I had already killed Kothvir.”

The sorcerer shook his head slowly. “Not that prophecy, but another that indicated the slayer of Kothvir would destroy the Necroleum.”

Suddenly uncounted coincidences and strange circumstances fell into place. Cardew and I both traveled to Herakopolis to attend the Emperor’s Ball on Bear’s Eve. We both had the same Bladesmaster, yet my training differed this time because Kit had left and Audin did not have two daughters to distract me from my studies. I was forced to read all the books my father had owned, but 1 was never allowed to see his journals. As a child I dunked a wooden horse in green paint because I remembered the Emerald Horse from when I used to ride him through Chaos, and the whistle to which I had trained him to come was the same 1 had used to train Stail.

It
was an impossible task—to make me once again what
I
had been forty years before, when 1 first came to Herakopolis. Yet they undertook it because of its importance.

“I understand.” I reached out and took the Staff of Emeterio from his hands. “Get them out of here.”

Roarke hesitated, then stood. He picked up the Fistfire Sceptre and mounted the steps to the exit tunnel. I watched him stop and talk to the others, then they joined him and left me alone in the hall of the dead.

I walked over and picked up the
vindictxvara
Kothvir had so lovingly crafted to destroy me. I wiped it clean on his fur, then slid it through the loincloth’s belt. Carrying the staff in my left hand, I stepped past Kothvir’s body and knelt on one knee beside Cruach.

The hound looked at me, and 1 bit my lower lip to keep it from trembling. I reached out and scratched him behind his left ear. “There’s never been as good a companion to a Chaos Rider as you have been, Cruach. The
Bharasfiadi
will have nightmares about you. Thank you for waiting for me.”

He twisted his head around and licked at my hand. His tongue felt as soft as silk, but even that simple motion drained him of strength. His head sank back down, and he looked at me as if to ask forgiveness for his failing.

“You’ve not failed, Cruach.” 1 stood and grasped the Staff in both hands. “You and 1, we’ve just started. The B
harashadi
will have nightmares about the both of us, nightmares to torment them for eternity. Anything that wants to get out of here will have to go past us. And between us, my friend, nothing gets past.”

I closed my eyes and felt the seductive caresses of whatever Emeterio had placed in his staff for intelligence. As it had done before, it offered me incredible power. It would do for me whatever I wanted. It existed to serve, and it acknowledged me as its master. I
have done what was necessary to oppose the Sceptre. What will you have me do for you, Master?

I brought the staff parallel to my waist and wrapped my right hand around the shaft. I willed the staff to show me a complete map of the Necroleum. It complied instantaneously, and I saw level upon level of caverns just like this one burrowed into the mountain. Each chamber had multiple links to others of them, making the mountain a virtual hive of
Bharashadi
dead. Our estimates of a hundred thousand dead
Bharashadi
waiting to be resurrected were as optimistic as they were wrong.

“It’s grand guardian duty we will be doing, Cruach.” 1 thought of Evadne, my
mother,
not grandmother, and how I would break my promise to her concerning my return. Likewise the promises both Cardew and Lachlan had made to Marija. “Forgive me.”

I thrust the Staff of Emeterio over my head and tightened my grip upon it. I let anger seize me. I let my fury with the
Bfiarasfiadi
and the grief over the deaths of so many pump through my body. I gathered every curse and indignity and mortification 1 had known in two lifetimes and used their venom to ignite a fire in my belly.