The White Towers (39 page)

These two moved off, almost silent, into the gloom.

And were soon joined by many others.

 

The endless corridors, with their straights and curves and twists and corners, led, inevitably, to the central throne room. There, King Yoon’s Central Zanne Throne stood on a raised dais at the head of a huge, magnificent hall. Normally, huge fires would have roared in hearths to east and west, but as Narnok, Faltor Gan and Randaman led the large group of ex-prison fighting men and women from the shadows, the hall in its entirety was gloomy, cool and still. A single figure sat on the throne of King Yoon. It was Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel, the elf rat sorcerer; ancient and twisted, his body enshrouded in brown robes interwoven with roots from his Heart Tree, his dark eyes, from a face of twisted bark, fixed on the group. He had his chin on his fist, and he was quite obviously waiting.

The group moved warily into the hall, weapons bristling, searching for other enemies. But all was quiet; all was still.

“Come forward,” said Bazaroth, his voice both low and yet carrying the distance.

Narnok, Randaman and Faltor Gan led the way, striding purposefully towards this commanding elf rat.

“Where is General Namash?” snapped Faltor Gan as they grew close.

Bazaroth gestured idly with his hand. “He is charged with bringing the armies south. Even now, they will have crossed the White Lion Mountains; they are a force that cannot be stopped.”

They were standing before the throne now, and closing fast. Narnok noted that the hall’s outskirts were lined with the dead, cocooned, as they had seen bodies throughout their journey into the bowels of Zanne Keep; and something prickled his scalp with the wrongness of it all. It was like they were being kept as trophies. Or… or because they still had some use? Narnok tapped Trista on the shoulder, and gestured, and she nodded. Her face was drawn with fear. This wasn’t like her, but then, they were now facing a sorcerer who had taken an arrow in the eye – one that had surely pierced his skull and brain. And yet here he sat, smiling and breathing and
living.

As if reading her thoughts, Bazaroth turned his attention on Trista. “I am linked to my Heart Tree,” he said, gently, explaining a new concept to a child. “You must destroy my heart to destroy me, and she lies far away back in Zalazar. Where your ancestors banished us. Where your ancestors sent us to die.”

“Not my ancestors,” said Trista, eyes narrowing.

Suddenly, from the shadows there came movement and the men and women readied themselves; the cocooned bodies were moving, thrashing in a sudden frenzy of activity, the roots which emerged from their mouths whipping and snapping about like so many snapped tendons – and they rose, a hundred of them rose, and Narnok’s arm came back with his huge battle axe, readying the throw that would surely split Bazaroth in half – as Faltor Gan’s dagger appeared in his fist, tip touching Narnok’s throat and drawing blood.

Narnok gave a sharp gasp of pain, and halted, axe above him, his eye widening.

“You betray us?” he growled.

“Sorry, Narnok of the Iron Wolves. This has been a long time in planning.”

“What, this meeting?”

“The invasion, you oaf,” smiled Faltor Gan.

The monsters created by the elf rats shuffled forward, their limbs moving woodenly as if controlled by another; and the men and women formed a circle of bristling steel, back to back, as Narnok stood with Faltor Gan’s blade at his throat. And it was going to explode. Explode real fast–

Trista whirled, but the blow dropped her with a groan. She slapped against the floor, cheek on marble, head spinning, tasting blood and a chip of tooth, stunned. She rolled onto her side, looking up through stars, and saw Randaman grinning down at her and patting the flat of his sword.

“Sorry, sweet lips, but it had to be done.”

“What are you doing, you crazy fucker?” shrieked Veila, her own sword turning on Randaman but a fist-thick sheath of tentacles vomited from his mouth, writhing and moving until they became the length of an arm – and from Faltor Gan, also, came a retching sound as he disgorged a sheath of tentacles and the two Red Thumbs stepped back from the shocked members of their own group, away from the Iron Wolves and the armed prisoners – to form a protective shield before Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel.

The wizened old sorcerer got to his feet, slowly, and seemingly with great pain. Then his eyes fixed on those before him, as more and more shambling creatures came from the shadows: from the deep halls of the Keep, from the dungeons, from the bedrooms, from the corridors, from the kitchens, each one infused with roots from Bazaroth’s very own body. The creatures, possessed humans of the Keep, surrounded the intruders; there were three hundred now, and more were shambling through the high arches and into the hall of Zanne Keep.

“Once, you made slaves of us,” said Bazaroth, his voice deep and melodious, and edged with a hissing sound like whispering leaves. “You killed us. You enslaved us. And you drove the remains from Vagandrak – into a place of poison that warped us into what you see before you today.”

Narnok helped Trista to her feet, and held her, and they glanced about helplessly.

“Now, you will know fear, and then you will know peace. For you shall all become slaves; slaves to the elf rat hordes.”

And with a cacophony of screams and the thrashing sounds of vomited root tentacles, with a rush of hundreds of bodies, the circle charged in…

Narnok’s axe lifted, thudding into one skull, then a reverse sweep sent it into a second, slicing tentacles from the face and cutting the head clean in two before the swarm was over him, engulfed him, and both he and Trista went down hard under the crush of many attackers.

Why,
asked Kiki, and released a breath.
Why could you possibly want me to merge with the salt plains?

Kiki plunged down into herself, and tendrils of energy scattered outwards, searching, questing, and she felt the raw energy of the salt plains spread out around her for hundreds of leagues, beaten by the wind and charged by the sun for millions of years. And she felt the pulse of magick through her veins, and revelled in the sudden glory of the
Equiem.
It was like somebody had opened a door in the air from a vicious, violent storm, and stepped into sunshine. And Kiki stepped through, arms wide open, accepting the raw
mana
of the
Shamathe
; of the land; of the Equiem.

Her eyes flicked open, and she lifted from the salt and she saw the face before her open with an “O” of shock. Kiki leapt, arms outstretched as if diving from a high place into a pool of molten gold, and was sucked suddenly into the slow-spinning maelstrom of the face. It became a thrashing image, and Dek and Zastarte found one another’s eyes, and their faces were grim with knowledge of impending death. The giant face was rolling, spinning, no longer a face but a twister of white streaked through with coloured images; as if Kiki and the salt demon had somehow become merged, were one, entwined in some symbiotic form of skin and bone and blood, and the very essence of the crystalline mineral. They spun and flowed and were a merged thing. A creature at war with itself.

Suddenly, the winds dropped. The whole storm literally fell to the salt earth. Above, stars glittered in a deep eternal sky.

Dek and Zastarte breathed fresh air, and slowly clambered from their sucking imprisonment, struggling at first, but managing to pull themselves free, crawling on all fours like dogs. Or wolves.

Dek scouted around, locating his long sword, and both men stood and stared at the large, immobile globe of white that hung, static in the air.

“She’s still in there,” said Zastarte, in awe.

Dek nodded.

“Is there anything we can do?”

Dek stepped forward, and tentatively touched the surface, yelping and withdrawing his finger with great eagerness.

“Cold?”

“No.” He sucked his finger. “Hotter than the lowest boiling level of the Chaos Halls.”

“So we wait.”

Dek swished his sword from side to side, and glanced around. But the rolling salt plains were deserted. He looked back at the vast slope of the embedded vessel; the upended
ship
. In the tunnel, the horses stood, motionless, ears flat against their skulls.

Dek ground his teeth, and waited.

 

Kiki looked around the smooth white walls inside the globe. She smiled.
Yes. Surprised, motherfucker?

All life must take other life to survive. It is the nature of things. It is the nature of the Equiem. And you are born of that power
,
that energy. You draw on it in ignorance, and revel in its fruits; but you did not plant the seeds. I have been here from the beginning. I helped to plant the seeds.

Kiki considered this.
You have changed your position, have you not?

My name is Shaheesh, of the Salt. And I am no demon. I am
…
how would you understand it? I am the life pulse that beats through the salt flats and the rolling mineral dunes. This is my land. My gateway. I am a guardian, if you will.

That’s fucking noble of you.
Kiki could not keep the sneer from her tone.

I could crush you, Kiki, if I so wished. You do not understand what I am capable of.
Shaheesh seemed to pause, in consideration.
I will let you go because of the elf rats. Because of your mission. Because of your selflessness. As I said, I am a guardian. I am not evil. But I must feed, on occasion. Feed from your kind. From our kind.

Kiki laughed, but it was a cold laugh.
You have three seconds to release me, or I’m going to rip a hole through the centre of you so big, I could ride a war charger through in full plate mail.

Kiki landed on her knees in the salt, coughing, and the globe surrounding her fluttered down, drifting apart in a gentle, cool breeze. The dawn was breaking, a cold blue horizon beckoning.

“Kiki!” Dek ran forward, scooped her up, hugged her hard.

“Good morning, Dek.” Her boots thudded the salt. There, at her feet, were her short swords and she lifted them, and ran them home into sheaths. “Zastarte. Saddle the horses. We need to leave here… quickly.”

“What happened in there?” asked Dek, eyes wide.

“Let’s just say we had a little woman to woman chat.”

“Was she a demon?”

Kiki frowned, then shook her head. “You know, Dek, I have a horrible feeling she was one of the old gods. The Equiem. Here, from the beginning of time. And guarding against something so terrible, and powerful, we’re all better off in our happy little ignorant bubbles.”

“Grak’s Balls! A goddess? I hope you were polite.”

Kiki gave a little cough, and took the reins of her mount, kicking herself up into the saddle. The beast snorted, stamping. It seemed far from happy. “Let’s just say I could have been a little more like a lady.”

 

They rode across the salt plains hard and fast, with increasing urgency, pushing their mounts and angling north and east, eager to be free of the rolling, hard-packed landscape. It was bleak, barren, a thoroughly sterile and lifeless land. Kiki and Dek hated it. Zastarte, for all his claims of hedonism and city sex, loved its bleakness.

During a short stop, where the lathered horses had muzzle-bags of oats, Kiki said, “We are only a short way from Junglan. Then we cut east past the Crystal Sea, then on to Skell Forest. Maybe we could reinforce there? I bet there’s still some of our old battalion stationed.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” said Dek.

“Unless the elf rats got there first,” said Zastarte, and his ominous words were met by contemplative silence.

Eventually, a distant horizon of rocks met their vision, and the salt flats gradually petered out into rocky foothills. A savage side-wind, which had been haunting them with wind chill and salt blast, was suddenly cut, and they slowed their pace, taking deep breaths, feeling at once more relaxed to be away from the threat the Salt Plains offered, yet increasingly frustrated by the pace at which they were crossing the land.

Zastarte, specifically, had withdrawn into long sullen silences, no doubt contemplating Trista’s fate, and wondering not just if he’d ever see her again, but even if she lived. He tortured himself with the several and severe ironies of the situation. He’d known her for years, and yet only now decided he was deeply, madly in love with her. And him, Prince Zastarte, who’d said so often and loud how the only woman who could ever ensnare him was one with enough wealth to buy a city. Him, Zastarte, terror of mothers and daughters alike. In fact, the man who liked to see them
burn.

He shook his head, silent conversations trickling through his mind.

What would he say to Trista when they next met?

And if,
if
he plucked up the courage to proclaim his undying love to this notorious man-hater, would she simply laugh in his face? Or run a dagger through his eye? He gritted his teeth. It was a risk he was willing to take. One he had to take.