Bloodstone (21 page)

Perhaps she could pull the sword to her. Cautiously Teres twisted around on her hips and stretched her feet toward the bow. She hunched closer. Her toes drew under the bowseat and touched the bundle. Another inch farther. She could feel the leather pack against her feet now. Her ankles were tightly bound, but she could hook a toe under the belt that circled the bundle.

She pulled her feet back, trying to lift the pack from the deck. The sword scraped against the hull. Teres sank her teeth into her lip, waited for a bufanoid face to peer over the side. Nothing. Could the creatures not have seen her sword when they captured her? She raised her ankles and drew back again, trying to keep the sword from clanking. Its scabbard hung crosswise against the bowstruts, jammed. Sweat stung her eyes. Carefully she shoved the pack back under the bow, rotated her ankles to free the scabbard, pulled it toward her once more. The scabbard came free of the strut; the bundle moved out into the open. Teres flexed her knees and drew her ankles to her hips.

A sudden splashing. Amphibian shoulders and trunks emerged from the water. They were passing over a shallow bar. Hostile faces glanced down at her, saw the sword only inches from her grasp.

She lunged for the hilt, but never had a chance. Cruel hands lifted her from the bow and dragged her roughly to the stern. The sword lay where she had dropped it. Ignoring the pain as protruding boards bruised her bare flesh, Teres stared at the fallen weapon in hopeless yearning. One of them threw a leather noose over her head, snugged it against her throat, and tied the loose end around the tiller. The booming croaks assailed her--angry, derisive--but she was too shaken to notice.

The day and the boat dragged on. Teres slumped against the stern, numb in spirit and body. The sword had been her last hope; now she could only expect death on some unhallowed altar, or an even more grisly fate. At least, no man would stand by to watch her passing-perhaps this unknown death would be a fitting climax for the legend she had worked to create. Poets and warriors of coming ages could speculate--whatever became of Teres, the she-wolf of Breimen? This was trifling consolation to her, but every other thought her mind turned to led only to cringing madness.

The sun was sinking now, but she was dimly aware of its course. Under its wan warmth, her leather bonds dried and tightened, bit into her flesh. There was water slopping along the bottom, and she splashed it over the thongs when the pain aroused her from her stupor. Once she thought about soaking the hide strips, so that they might stretch and grow slack. But the leather had been wet before it was tied and would stretch no farther; after a while she abandoned the attempt.

Once there sounded a bellow of pain, followed by tremendous thrashing. Teres looked up to see one of her captors struggling in the writhing coils of an enormous serpent whose jaws were embedded in the amphibian's shoulder. Other Rillyti closed in, their golden swords hacking at the reptile, so that it was half severed in a number of places. Spewing dark blood, the serpent at last released its victim and slithered beneath the surface, where its contortions boiled the scum to foam. The stricken Rillyti floated listlessly, legs kicking in rough spasms. A pair of the creatures dragged its body behind them as they resumed their progress. Teres hoped the snake's wounds had not been mortal.

Hours passed in monotonous misery. Somehow the Rillyti found a path through the rotting maze. A few times they had to drag the rowboat across mud bars, but generally they simply carried it in tow. There was a wide circuit made at another point, where Teres observed a limitless morass of quicksand, too treacherous for even the swamp creatures to dare.

Through the tangle of vegetation, she caught glimpses of higher ground now and again. Its shadowy outline persisted, until at length she could discern an island rising from the swamp. In places now she thought she sighted a great wall of rubrous stone looming over the trees. Her mind worked in detached speculation. Perhaps she would walk the legendary streets of lost Arellarti before she died.

The hull scraped against stone, nudged into a moss-carpeted quay. Clambering from the water, the Rillyti moored the rowboat against the overgrown quay and ascended the steep bank of the island. One of them unceremoniously slung Teres across its shoulder and followed the others.

Twisting her head, she secured an inverted view as she jolted up the bank and onto a stone causeway. Hundreds of the Rillyti were milling about, hurrying to examine the captive. Their bass cries echoed from the walls--dull bellows, hoarse croaks, rasping hisses--plainly intelligible communication to their pit-like ears. From their numbers, they must have made this ruined city their encampment.

Ruined city? Teres stared about in amazement, her mind slipping off its shroud of despair. The legends of the existence of this lost prehuman city were true. But it was more than the wonder of these cyclopean walls of unknown stone, the precise and alien geometry of its radial streets and windowless buildings, the monstrous creatures who shambled through this masterwork of eons-dead genius--it was not this alone that made her breath catch in astonishment. For Arellarti was not the dead ruin legend had pictured.

Arellarti was in a state of reconstruction. Everywhere she passed, there was evidence of full-scale restoration. The streets were cleared of debris. No strangling encroachment of swamp growth remained--although traces of Kranor-Rill's invasion could be seen in bits of vine that clung like lost streamers in the cracks of the walls, or the phantom trails of suckers etched to the stones where once they climbed. Drying fragments of brush yet littered the streets in places, fugitive scraps from the enormous mounds which had been dragged away.

And the city was being rebuilt. Rillyti labored busily to erase the scars of time. Huge blocks of the strange stone were being hoisted atop the wall; broken obelisks rose again; jagged rifts were smoothed, filled in. Scaffolding was thrown up around many of the buildings, where cracked and slanting edifices were being dismantled, new stones laid to heal the decay. Where the scouring elements had effaced the bizarre engravings of the walls, crumbled away certain peculiar carvings and ornamentation, hulking workers were restoring the original patterns with meticulous attention. An entire army of swamp creatures worked with single-minded zeal to undo the corrosive marks of millennia. Arellarti was emerging from its long death, shedding grave-mold and cobweb as it rose from its swamp-buried tomb.

But the marvel of this reawakening titan of elder Earth could not dispel the horror of her plight. Teres sensed the colossal presence before she was able to see it, stretched helpless across her captor's shoulder as she was. Its shadow fell over them-shadows were filling all of Arellarti now, as the sun slunk away. Across the central courtyard they bore her, down an incline, and into the enclosure of a vast dome.

Teres caught shaken glimpses of the gigantic walls which soared away to darkness far above, of a limitless space encircled within-columns of bizarre design, gleaming banks of stone, crystal and metal, sinister coils of unfamiliar alloys. A fantastic structure of unimaginable complexity. It had the aura of a temple to some dark and nameless god.

The Rillyti laid her on the altar then--an altar it must be, for now she saw the god. A hemisphere of bloodstone, huge as the heavens, brooded in the center of this prehuman dome. She stared into it in dread fascination, struggling only weakly when they cut her bonds, tied her spread-eagled to the oddly positioned bars which protruded from the crescent altar, whose stone carried stains of frightful significance.

The bloodstone was alive.

In terror Teres remembered her nightmare, knew that her subconscious mind had felt the evil influence of this sentient crystal, as she drifted into its poisoned realm. Perhaps the bloodstone, sensing her intrusion, had dispatched its servants to bring her to its temple. She writhed against her bonds, mechanically, without hope of freeing herself. The altar's curious knobs and protrusions jammed into her back, making her wonder at its outré design.

The crystal was alive with energy. A green luminance made its depths translucent for an impossible distance; scarlet flame pulsed through its veined markings. The entire dome was lit by the crystal's evil glow, and vibrant energy seemed to radiate unseen through its lustrous tentacles of multihued metals, hummed and throbbed through the looming columns of machinery. Like the monstrous eye of some cyclopean god, the bloodstone glared from its setting, considering its shambling worshippers and the horrified sacrifice tied to its altar. From what alien dimension, in what benighted age, she wondered, had come this crystal of malevolent energy to this world?

Crowds of Rillyti were gathering in the shadows. Turning her gaze from the bloodstone, Teres saw the figure approach her--a robed batrachian of imposing stature. His fingers were closed upon a knife of white metal, and it threw back the wavering glow of the bloodstone as he stood over her.

The priest, for such he must be, began a roaring chant. Like an obscene chorus, the assembled Rillyti responded to his invocation, croaked a rhythmic litany that echoed ceaselessly across the dome. Teres heard their gibbering chant only dimly; all her attention was held by the glinting knife as it rose and fell, wavered about her pinioned form. The blade seemed to hover now over her belly, as the invocation rose in crescendo. Breathing a final prayer to Ommem--though in truth her god seemed to have forgotten her--Teres set her teeth, steeled her muscles, watched the flickering knife carve ritual passes through the air above her flesh. This was going to be worse than her imagination had pictured.

The chant trailed off abruptly. Teres closed her eyes, expecting the knife to descend. It did not, during the time of the breath she unconsciously held, and she opened her eyes to see what new depravity she must face. The priest had stepped back, so she stole another breath, one she had never thought to draw. The knife was lowered--at his side, not in her belly. The Rillyti appeared to cringe in fear.

Crackling light brushed her face, and Teres risked a glance away from the knife to follow the eyes of the worshippers. In the air above the bloodstone a creature of fire was taking shape.

God or demon? Teres wondered, unable to guess what meant the awed response of the Rillyti. It was a humanoid shape, she observed, dancing like witch's fire over the apex of the living crystal. A man of light, of energy, of the coruscant life force that glowed within the bloodstone. Smoothly its outlines coalesced, a man of emerald and ruby-veined energy, a silhouette in three dimensions.

As its flickering outlines grew less blurred, the vibrant energy cooled and solidified. The figure floated from above the bloodstone, glided down its smooth sides, came to rest before the altar. The Rillyti were slinking away into the night, even as the shimmering film of energy drew away from the figure like a mask, revealing the man who had formed from the crystal's alien force. But Teres had already found the silhouette familiar to her eyes; recognized the substance of this crystal that was not bloodstone, though it resembled that gem; remembered well where she had seen such a crystal before. And so it came as no sudden shock to Teres that the man who stood before her was the stranger called Kane.

Kane's eyes swept over the awestricken Rillyti, his manner domineering, commanding. Some voiceless communication seemed to pass between man and batrachian, and Teres sensed the silent anger that drove the creatures back into the night, resentful but subdued.

"What are you, Kane... man or demon?" Teres exclaimed.

Kane considered her thoughtfully for a moment, vexation mingled with indecision in his frown. "I've been called both," he answered distractedly, "though both races have damned me often enough. And I claim neither--although once men called me brother. With time you can decide in your own mind; for now it's enough that the Rillyti obey me."

His knife cut her bonds. Teres groaned and slid from the altar, massaged her wrists and ankles. There were angry bruises where she had lain against the protruding bars.

"This isn't an altar, of course," muttered Kane abstractly, watching her ministrations. "It's a control dais for Bloodstone. The Rillyti have declined into pitiful degeneracy since the days of Arellarti's building, and their superstitious rites have replaced whatever knowledge they may once have had of Bloodstone. I had forbidden these pointless sacrifices--it's a testament to Krelran engineering that the controls weren't completely jammed after centuries of such abuse. Still, old ways die hard, as they say. You were too tempting a victim for them to waste, which is some measure of the toads' degeneracy, I suppose, when you consider the evolutionary gulf between Rillyti and mankind.

"Teres, you present a complication to me just now. Still, there are ways I can turn this twist of fate to my advantage. I assume you must have blundered into the Neltoben's South Branch--I should have allowed for the river's rise. But then, you told me you were certain of your geography."

Her legs shook, but she turned on him angrily. "It seems, Kane, that your schemes are far more subtle than those of the ambitious adventurer I first judged you! There's a sorcery here, and it appears I'm only a pawn in some diabolical mystery... and that I had the bad grace to upset some phase of your conspiracy. But what devil's game do you play, Kane? By what wizardry did you materialize from the bloodstone's rays? And since I doubt it was accident that you came when you did, why did you cheat your minions of their sport? A little water would have cleaned things afterwards, and you wouldn't have caused their resentment!"

"Toads obey me, or they die. I couldn't care less for their affection. As to my presence, I see what Bloodstone sees, and Bloodstone sees all within Arellarti." He paused, then added: "I intervened because... because your death was useless to me... perhaps because you interest me. My game--as well you name it--is an adventure whose goals you will soon understand. You err in accusing me or sorcery, but then the true nature of my power so defies human comprehension that men will call it magic.