Bloodstone (20 page)

Kane busied himself with the lock, picking skillfully with a sliver of metal drawn from his boot. In a moment the chain was loose. Overturning the boat, he grasped the stern and raised it easily. "You want to catch the bow so she doesn't grate on the stones?" he suggested. Teres strained her back to the task and lifted the bow clear of the mud while Kane carried the vessel to the water's edge. The launching had been done in silence.

"All right, you know your course. Don't hit a snag in the dark, is all," he warned her. "Keep to the current, and you'll reach the fork of the Clasten and the Macewen by noon or so. Use the oars if your shoulders can stand it--steer with the tiller be better, probably. Going to be light in a few hours, so you can see the drift."

Teres murmured acknowledgment as she tossed in her bundle and stepped over the bow. Kane handed her the stolen cloak. "This will keep you warm. Let me have that negligee. People saw me walk out with a girl in my arms; they'll see me return the same way. I'll find some tavern wench and carry her back with me--she'll never figure it out, when she wakes up in Dribeck's castle."

Handing him the garment, Teres covered herself with the cloak and dropped down beside the tiller. "You're taking the biggest risk now, Kane," she advised. "Ristkon's body may have been discovered already... Pentri found drugged in your room instead of abroad with you. You could walk right back into a trap."

"I've thought of that," Kane admitted. "Well, for these stakes I'll chance it. Good luck." "Good luck to you," she replied. Her smile was concerned. "Kane, thanks for what you've done."

He shrugged, muttered something indistinct. With a shove, he sent the boat out into the current. For a moment she saw him gazing after her, then darkness engulfed them both.

The rain was cold, the mist from the river colder. Teres huddled under the clammy folds of the cape, limbs pressed together for warmth. The cloak was soaked through, but kept the rain off; underneath she wore only the brief halter and loin belt, and through the thin silk, the filigree, chains and beads were chill against her flesh. She considered her packet of clothing, but left it under the bowpiece where it could stay dry. She could not get any wetter, at least, and should the boat capsize, she could swim better like this.

Through the night the river bore her along. In the darkness it was impossible to judge her speed, but the boat seemed to hurtle through the rain. Logs and bits of drift bobbed past, pulled from the shore as the Neltoben climbed along its banks. At first, Teres's heart caught each time a chunk of flotsam nudged against the boat. But their course and speed were about the same, and presently she ignored the other passengers upon the flood current. Occasionally she drifted near enough to discern the blacker shadow of the riverbank, and quickly she would steer the boat back into the middle of the stream. A few snags reached out, but these were rare, for the river had risen several feet, and the racing current swirled her craft past such obstructions.

A monotonous drizzle, the rain continued to fall. Dawn was drawing near, though, for the skies were tinged with gray. The shoreline became a dark wall, dreamily floating past her boat, and the mist grew thicker, whiter with the approach of light. At present there seemed little to do to man the rowboat; the river appeared willing to carry her back to her land without effort on her part. It was not even raining heavily enough now to bail.

Wearily Teres slumped across the stern. Her hair was wringing wet and made a clammy pillow as she stretched trying to make herself comfortable. The patter of rain and the mumble of the river were soothing, hypnotic. When had she last slept? An eternity ago, it seemed. The ordeal of the last few days left her exhausted, drained of strength physically and emotionally. How pleasant it was to lie here, alone with the river and the rain and the coming dawn.

Teres slept.

Dreams came to her, flowing like the river. Troubled scenes of battle, shiny blades flashing for her. She fought frantically, her movements slow, clumsy. She hacked at onrushing assailants whose bodies showed no wound, who kept coming toward her even as she slashed and chopped their unyielding flesh. Swords stabbed into her, tore her skin. She seemed to feel the pain, moaned and twisted as she lay, unable to waken fully.

Faces drifted past her consciousness, flotsam on the current. Familiar ones whose names she knew, anonymous faces who had swirled before her eyes in the fury of combat. Malchion--always taunting, laughing at her as he encouraged her. Ristkon--his face ghastly purple, twisted smile leering. His whip struck her face, scarred her cheek. His hands clutched, scratched, turned to spiders that crawled over her flesh. Dribeck, proud and disdainful--never drawing a breath until his cunning told him how to act to best advantage. His words so convincing, his heart black with lies. Kane--his face hidden by a mask. Mysterious. Always present when fate seemed poised to turn, other times a phantom. His actions always readily explained. Behind the mask... what motives, what secret laughter?

The strange ring he wore. Its sinister jewel glowed before her mind's eye, impossibly large, intolerably brilliant, unthinkably evil. It shone through his mask, its malevolent gleam supplanting the blue murderlust that smouldered under his brow. Terror intense, now, the nightmare touching her with insane fear. The bloodstone was enormous, immense as the sun. Kane disappeared within its depths. Its evil luster engulfed her, tore at her mind as she fought insensately, sucked at her soul with vampiric lust. There were other things dimly visible in its hellish luminance... writhing figures human, humanoid, utterly alien. They were slaves of the bloodstone, their souls feeding its fire through eternal agony. The gem was alive, sentient! Its aura was creeping across the land, sweeping the entire Earth into its pulsating flames. It saw her now, wanted her, reached out its glowing tendrils for her. Its touch, probed her brain!

She screamed then and shot upright, almost capsizing the boat. Her mouth tasted of fear. Sick and shuddering, she sat hunched against the stem, groggily recollecting her thoughts as fire racked her cramped muscles. Light. The sun was high. The rain had ceased; the mist still hung. She was on the river.

She was not on the river.

In lost confusion, Teres looked about her. The rowboat no longer shot along the current; the riverbank did not rise against the sky. Instead her craft drifted listlessly through a tepid mire, and all about her rose a chaotic wilderness of slime-laden mud and vine-strangled trees.

Kane's warning! The darkness, her slumber! When the Neltoben River had risen in flood, its mud-choked South Branch had once more flowed with rushing water. While she slept, the boat had been caught in this deviant current.

She had drifted into Kranor-Rill!

Bleakly she recalled the dark tales of this unwholesome morass... the deadly creatures who crawled through its labyrinth, the treacherous stretches of unseen quicksand, its ruined city, said to have been built in the Earth's lost dawn, and the fearsome Rillyti, who conducted certain abominable rites with captured humans in the fastness of the swamp. She shivered; the late morning sun seemed cheerless through the swamp mist.

No time to panic now, she told herself, still shaken by the horror of her dream. Teres shrugged off the cloak, tied back her straggly hair, found blood on her face where a low-trailing limb had slapped her. Bright Ommem, how far into Kranor-Rill had the boat drifted?

Far indeed, it appeared. Little current stirred her craft. Looking around, she saw only a maze of bayous leading away... leading who knew where? The rising water had covered most of the mud flats; cypress knees were flush with the surface; sycamore thickets were wreathed with floating slime at their bases. She might have drifted in from a myriad possible avenues.

Stoically Teres shipped oars and pulled back against the scum-flecked water. So long as she rowed against the current, her course must be directed out of the swamp. Unfortunately, the current here had grown so tenuous that she could not be certain of its direction, or even of its existence.

Her fatigue scarcely diminished by her troubled sleep, Teres's back and shoulders quickly grew tight with ache. It was a heavy boat for one not accustomed to rowing. Still, there was great danger here, and she forced her protesting frame to row, to row, to row.

One bayou proved to be a cut-de-sac, and she cursed bitterly as she retraced her course. Softened from the rain, her hands began to chafe and blister at the oars. With strips of silk torn from her loin belt she bound the oar handles, which helped somewhat.

Then the bow rammed against some submerged obstruction, jarring the boat. Startled, her wide eyes gazed intently at the planks, relieved that no snag had burst through. But the rowboat appeared hung against something--how? She had not rammed another mud bar surely.

Despite her nerve, Teres screamed when the webbed hands slapped over the side of the boat. Like sorcery--conjured demons, the Rillyti rose from the murky depths of the swamp. How many? Ten, fifteen... what matter? They surrounded her boat, paddled in scum-trailing circles about her, climbed from behind tangles of cypress roots, slid from dank thickets along mud flats.

The rowboat rocked violently. Teres dropped the oars and leaped for her sword, lying just beneath the bowseat. A sudden tilt all but capsized the boat, threw her dizzily against the bottom. She scrambled to her knees, nearly falling overboard as the boat lurched again.

A webbed hand shot over the side and clamped about her arm. Teres snarled in animal loathing, pounded at the imprisoning grip, sank her teeth into its foul scaly hide. The hand only tightened, scraping into her flesh with its rough claws. The rowboat tilted heavily, would have overturned had not webbed hands held it steady. With a wet flop, a Rillyti clambered over the stern, its bulging eyes hideous as they glared at her.

Teres went mad, tore at the clawed fingers that pinioned her, nearly disjointed her shoulder, as she sought desperately to stretch out for the sword. It waited just inches from her straining fingers. The other batrachian reached for her now. Her bare foot kicked out savagely. Clawing, biting like an animal she fought back. Against its armored hide her fists were useless. Another crawled into the boat and pinned her arms. Only the steadying hold of the Rillyti clustered about them kept the rowboat from capsizing a hundred times.

Tired of her struggling, the Rillyti cuffed her, almost breaking her jaw. Teres went limp, stunned almost senseless by the blow that clouded her mind with starbursts of pain, filled her mouth with the taste of blood. With thongs of leather the monsters bound her wrists and ankles, the knots clumsy but sound. Leaving her slumped across the bottom of the boat, they leaped over the side again.

As the fog in her thoughts cleared, Teres felt the vessel moving. The Rillyti were towing the boat into the depths of Kranor-Rill.

For a while Teres lay there, too sick with horror- to move. Her thoughts--spinning dizzily, drugged from fatigue and terror--painted gibbering images of stark fear. They had not killed her outright; the creatures had bound her like a trussed lamb. Vividly the whispered legends of Kranor-Rill screamed through her mind. The loathsome rites the Rillyti performed on captured humans, the nameless god of elder-world evil to whom they sacrificed on moonless nights. She recalled the dark tales of their raids upon isolated frontier settlements, of the depraved bestiality that tainted their treatment of those whose misfortune was not to be slaughtered outright, of the unspeakable atrocities the mutilated corpses bore witness to, the hideous ravings of those mindless wretches who lived to mew and giggle at their belated rescuers. In dread, Teres remembered that the moon was waning these last few nights, and her sanity all but fled as she thought about the manner of her death.

This was not the way the she-wolf died, cowering on her belly in abject fear. The unyielding steel of Teres's will shivered at the blows of demon panic, but would not snap under its awesome pressure. Though it almost strangled her, she choked down the bleating scream that once released would never stop. She called herself warrior, not trembling court lady; if this was to be her dismal fate, Teres meant to die true to the identity she had chosen.

She lifted her head, forced her eyes to see what lay about her, drove the frightened images from her mind. Her sword. The monsters had paid no attention to her pack. It still lay under the bow, the bundle of clothing, provisions... and her sword.

Teres twisted about. She sat hunched in the stern; the sword was several feet away. Perhaps she could reach it, stealthily ease it from its scabbard, cut her bonds. There was no hope of escaping the Rillyti, she understood that. But with sword in hand she would shower the swamp with their blood. She would fight until they were forced to kill her... die a clean death with her blade reeking with her enemies' gore.

But first she must reach the sword. Carefully she shifted her position. Her captors swam alongside the rowboat, clutching its sides; this kept her movements within the boat hidden from them. Slowly Teres drew her knees under her and pushed forward across the bottom. Heart thundering in her breast, she waited motionlessly, praying her activity had not aroused suspicion.

She wriggled forward another foot to reach the midship seat. Surely the Rillyti could sense her shifting weight--how long before they investigated? Pressing against the bottom, she writhed underneath the seat overhead. Her wrists were tied behind her back, so that she must slide her weight along the battered boards. Grit and splinters of wood abraded her bare flesh, the needling pain unnoticed in the tearing agony of suspense. She crawled from under the seat. Halfway there... what would happen when her weight tilted the bow into the water?

Inch by painful inch, Teres edged toward the bow, crawling a little, then resting to lull the monsters' curiosity. She could almost touch the sword now... and here was the most dangerous point. The pack had been jammed well up under the bowseat to stay dry, and with her hands bound behind her back, Teres would have to sit against the bow and reach up under the seat. This would raise her head in view of the Rillyti; it was daring too much to hope it would not draw attention.