The Deadwalk (21 page)

The chamber was once again under her command.

Riordan cast a glance into the Amber's depths. Kanarek made steady progress
through the halls, cutting through the last of Haelian ranks. She caught a
glimpse of Nhaille and Penden at the front of the assault. Waves of dead
soldiers followed in their wake. Dead Haelian warriors took up swords on the
side of Kanarek. Lines of Haelian soldiers dwindled.

Nhaille? She felt after his essence, received the spark of his life in
answer. He was weakening rapidly, will alone keeping him on his feet.

Certain to die, Rau mocked from inside her mind. Riordan flexed the muscles
of her mind, squelching his thoughts as though she squeezed them in her fist.
One thing left to do. Then she could destroy the Amber and Nhaille could
rest.

Send Penden to the throne room, she ordered Nhaille. Secure the King's
surrender!

Riordan raised her eyes from the scene unfolding in the Amber to the pathetic
wraiths that held the chamber. Still as the stone itself, the dead stood facing
outward, awaiting her next orders. The stench sent bile rising in her throat.
Her stomach lurched, she gagged and choked back the urge to vomit.

Why am I being squeamish now? she wondered. But there was a strange rolling
quality to the sickness that would not abate.

Squeamish? Rau inquired acidly. Surely not Riordan-Khun-Caryn, Warrior
Queen.

Riordan shoved Rau back into that tiny pocket in her mind. A shadow moved
between her and the door. She looked up to find one of the dead stumbling toward
her.

Kanarekii, had to be. One of the very first. His uniform, if he'd ever had
one was frayed long past recognition. Skin hung in loose tatters from his frame.
Lips shriveled back from his gums in a permanent sneer.

But as he cocked his head to see through the pitiful ruin of his face, his
one good eye held a semblance of awareness. Steeling herself, Riordan met his
gaze.

#

Bevan stared up at the shadowy figure before him. This was the mind that drew
him onward, the one that shone like the sun through the gloom of his failing
senses. The one that promised him salvation. A quiet dark featureless rest.

He'd done all she asked. Walked forever it seemed. Fought, killed. The
prospect of oblivion was strangely seductive. Freedom, void of thought, of the
shame at what he had become.

He wanted desperately to tell her these things, but his mind was a barely
discernible spark in the inferno of her consciousness. The message he sent with
the sum of his failing thought flamed like a dying coal then turned to ash.

She turned toward him. Eyes nearly as pale as her hair seized him, much as
her mind had. Something thrummed in the depths of his consciousness, an old
rhyme that played on the edges of memory before evaporating. Something
significant he should remember. His jaw worked. No sound came out.

No way to make her understand.

Light played along the thing in her hand, drawing his gaze downward. A sword.
Tumblers clicked in the lock on his mind. Thoughts fell into place. The Sword of
Zal-Azaar. Rescue, after all.

Bevan executed an awkward bow.

Staring at the floor, he didn't see the descending Sword. The blow came at
first as a surprise, then as blessed relief. The floor rushed up to meet
him.

He fell bonelessly into darkness. Into the tornado that sucked him downward.
Then he was staring down as if from a great height at the blackened body that
disintegrated into green ooze before vanishing into the crystal sword.

There were others like him there, lost souls trapped in purgatory before
being sent on to their rightful rest. His thoughts unraveled one by one, weaving
themselves into the fabric of that bright mind. Death certainly, but not the
quiet oblivion he'd hoped for.

PATIENCE, she said. He could almost feel her smile. IT'S NOT OVER YET.

#

Riordan blinked away the last of the Kanarekii's thoughts.

We have secured the throne room, came Nhaille's message, weaker now, but
still maintaining control of the Power Stone. The King wishes to speak of
surrender.

Can you bring him to me? I can't leave the Amber, Riordan sent back and
caught the current of his assent.

The room still spun dizzily around her. Fatigue? she wondered. The strain of
battle, of bearing both the Sword and the Amber catching up with her. Nhaille
also weakened with every moment, the task she had given him sapping the last of
his failing strength. She desperately wanted it all to be finished. With Rau in
her mind, it was dangerous to think such things. Riordan shoved her thoughts out
of Rau's reach.

Commotion moved toward them from down the hallway. The dead soldiers
protecting her parted, forming a corridor of rotting bodies, making way for
Nhaille and his procession to pass.

Riordan glanced at him and bit back a gasp. His skin was deathly pale. From
the rigid way he moved, she could tell he was in a great deal of pain. He kept
his feet with great effort.

Behind him came Penden and another soldier leading a white-haired man. Hael's
King, she realized, though he looked anything but regal. His robes were
disheveled as if it had been days since he'd had time to attend to them. Shadows
ringed his eyes. She couldn't see Rau's features in his face. But the scared
youth dragged behind him by two Kanarekii soldiers could have been Rau's double.
Tanin-Rau, his older brother sneered within her mind.

So this was the younger son on which the King lavished so much attention. In
one glance she could tell the terrified boy would never have the spine to rule a
kingdom. But given Rau's tendencies for death and destruction, she could see why
the King had chosen in favor of his youngest son.

Hael's King stared across the Amber at her, his eyes defiant. But then his
gaze fastened instead on the Sword.

“Yes, this is the Sword of Zal-Azaar. And I am Riordan-Khun-Caryn, Queen of
Kanarek.”

She watched the knowledge of his defeat settle in his expression. But he
offered her no more than a brief nod. “Marik-Rau,” he said.

Coward! Rau shrieked at him through her mind. He is about to throw away
everything I fought for.

You fought for the wrong thing, she shot back with mental viciousness. And
you had not the wit to realize it.

“Your Majesty,” Riordan offered the old King the slightest hint of a bow.
Fear whitened his face. His lips moved, but words failed him.

He expected her to run him through with the Sword, she realized with a shock.
As if I don't have enough of the House of Rau in my head already.

I'd rather not have his company, Doan-Rau said. Such animosity lay between
father and son it penetrated even the barrier of death. Her heartbeat raced with
the pulse of Rau's rage.

“Kanarek holds the palace and the city. Your army of the dead are now under
my command. Doan-Rau is dead. The Amber is mine.” Riordan laid the facts before
him. Still Hael's King said nothing. “Give me your surrender, Your Majesty!”

Marik-Rau ignored her demand, asking instead, “How did my son die?”

A father's concern. She couldn't afford to be touched by his pain.

The old man is weak, Rau snarled.

“I would have spared his life,” Riordan said, realizing that after all it was
the truth. “But he insisted on challenging the Sword of Zal-Azaar and in doing
so met his end.”

Hael's king blanched another shade paler.

“I have shown more mercy than Hael showed Kanarek,” Riordan said. Subtle
threat lurked in those softly spoken words.

Marik-Rau's eyes flickered from the Sword to the Amber and back to Riordan.
Even faced with the grim reality, it seemed he still couldn't bring himself to
end it in disgrace.

He doesn't even have the courage to surrender, Rau growled in her mind. He
disgusts me.

“Haelian lives are being lost with every passing second,” Riordan pointed
out. “Surrender, Your Majesty, and end the killing.”

A sudden shift in Rau's thoughts brought her alert. She hadn't even felt the
sudden lapse of Rau's attention. She hadn't even noticed as he turned his
concentration from his hatred of his father to the battle raging below. With one
blow of his powerful mind, the course of the battle changed.

Suddenly Rau ruled the dead. In the halls of the palace, the dead turned
against Kanarekii forces. Riordan watched in horror as even within the chamber
the dead turned on their Kanarekii guards.

“Nhaille!” Riordan barely ground out his name out before the crushing weight
of Rau's will squeezed the breath from her lungs. She struggled for control of
the dead, for control of her own body. To her further astonishment, she felt her
sword arm rising, the clear profile of the Sword swinging into action.

#

Like diving into a blast furnace, Rau's hatred singed the edges of her mind.
Anger tempted her to answer with her own fury. But desperation forced her to
exert her own calm will. Within the maelstrom, she felt Nhaille's cool certainty
as he offered her the last of his strength. She reveled in it, used it.

Rau held on with a will of tempered steel.

Control slipped away from her, further into Haelian hands. Riordan tightened
her grip on the Sword's hilt in a desperate attempt to keep Rau from using both
the Sword and the Amber to his advantage.

Understanding hit in a blaze of light. Instead of grasping after control of
the Amber, Riordan felt out through the Sword, searching after the wisps of
souls it had claimed. She felt them there within the depths of its
consciousness, drew them to her. Feeble minds of those that had marched in the
army of the dead joined Haelians warriors who had paid with their lives for
Rau's ambition. Some would not be turned, but others rushed toward her plea.

Strength rushed into her. Riordan reached out with the sum of her soul and
made one last desperate grasp for control. The onslaught took Rau by surprise.
She felt the momentary lapse in his concentration and poured her mental army
into the breach.

Rau's mind slammed against her control. He battered the wall of their
collective will, but the wall held. Slowly, they pried the Amber from Rau's
grasp.

Riordan sagged back against the Amber. Glancing into its depths she found the
army of the dead back in Kanarekii hands. Guards in the chamber subdued the
dead. Penden's men still had Hael's King and his Heir firmly in hand. But
Nhaille leaned against the stone wall as if it held him up.

“You don't hold the Amber as well as you proclaim,” Marik-Rau said into the
uneasy silence.

Riordan leapt across the space between them. With one swipe of the Sword, she
tore through the King's robe, leaving a trickle of red blood against the velvet.
“Do not forget, Your Majesty,” she snarled, “that I do have sole control of the
Sword of Zal-Azaar. If you don't surrender, I will send you and every Haelian
citizen to the halls of Al-Gomar. And I will not stop until Hael lies in ruin,
just like Kanarek.”

Getting no answer, Riordan pressed the Sword deeper into his chest. Cloth
tore. Blood seeped along the crystal blade.

“Surrender Father,” Tanin-Rau said suddenly. He cast a worried glance at the
Sword. “Don't damn me to die on the blade of that thing.”

And this is the coward he would put on the throne instead of me, Rau growled
within her mind.

Riordan leaned on the blade. The king gasped in sudden pain. “What will it
be, Your Majesty?”

“Hael surrenders!” he said quickly.

“Give the order,” Riordan said. “Stop the fighting.”

Marik-Rau nodded.

Riordan withdrew the Sword. To Penden, she said, “Take him to the balcony.
See that he does give the order. Round up the rest of his advisors and throw
them in the dungeon. I'm sure there is one. I can't imagine a Haelian palace
without such accommodations.”

Penden and his guards hauled the old king across the hallway to the balcony
overlooking the square. In the Amber she watched as the fighting slowly abated.
Haelian soldiers lay down their swords. She gave the order to the dead to stand
aside.

Through the ruin of the door, she saw Penden dragging Hael's King and his son
back down the hallway. Their weight supported the old man who, his kingdom lost,
now sagged lifelessly in their arms.

“Nhaille.”

His head came up, turning his haunted gaze upon her.

“My father. Have the men find him. Bring him to me.”

His jaw hardened at the mention of his friend. But he nodded and gave the
order. Riordan turned back to the Amber. In the depths of her mind, she felt the
flicker of Rau's interest.

“Don't even think of it Rau.” She placed the flat blade of the Sword of
Zal-Azaar inches from the Amber's surface. “Make one move and I'll drive the
Sword right through it. Don't think for a moment I wouldn't. I'm sick to the
death of all this fighting, of Shraal weapons and Shraal evil.”

You wouldn't, he insisted. No one knows what would happen.

“I do,” she said in utter weariness. “And trust me, you wouldn't like
it.”

Rau was silent, though his essence seethed with anger. She wasn't foolish
enough to think him beaten though. Wouldn't put it past him to make another
attempt for the Amber's control in a last ditch effort to save all he'd fought
for.

Riordan pressed the Sword closer to the Amber.

Movement on the periphery of her vision brought her head up sharply. She
heard Nhaille's startled gasp. In the doorway stood the barely recognizable
remnants of a human being.

“Father.”

Slowly, he turned his face to gaze at her through the last failing vision of
his right eye. Shriveled lips moved stiffly without sound.

“I've done all you asked of me,” Riordan said softly. And then, “I've done
the best I could.”

Now isn't that touching, Rau sniped.

Kanarek's king shuffled toward her. Awkwardly, he turned his head, looking at
last upon the Sword of Zal-Azaar. Withered facial muscles moved in what could
have been a grimace.