Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (39 page)

“Halvisun, can’t you tell Ebemoon to leave
me alone? You seem like a friendly person.”

“Ebemoon has a mind of his own on this kind
of thing.
Believe
me, I’ve tried
to reason with him, G’lan knows I have, more times than I care to
recall, but he always gets his way. You see Ebemoon and I… oh,
drat… I seem to have miscalculated, sorry G’Taklar, I so wanted to
help you…”

“What are you saying, Halvisun!” G’Taklar
yelled in panic.

Suddenly two massive hands grabbed G’Taklar
around the upper arms, startling the naked young man. He yelled in
pain as sharp claws pierced his arms, but a moment later he was
silent as the venom from the
souldead’s
claws paralyzed his system.

“
G’lan, I can’t move!”
G’Taklar
exclaimed within his mind.

“
I’m with you, G’Taklar,”
Jatar
answered calmly, trying to be the anchor for G’Taklar’s wildly
fluctuating emotions.

“
It’s one of Vorg’s souldead! It’s going
to kill me, suck the brains from my head! Help me, I...”
G’Taklar’s overtaxed mind blacked out from the strain and the venom
coursing through his body.

When G’Taklar became conscious again all he
could see was blackness.

“
So this is death?”
G’Taklar thought
resignedly.

“
Not quite, you aren’t dead yet,”
Jatar’s unmistakable thought responded.

“
Jatar, where are we?”

“
Look around, so I can see.”

G’Taklar did as he was instructed and he
could see a round patch of grayness above, some dim light from far
away.
“We're in a
pit
,”
he reasoned,
“how did we get in
here?”

Jatar’s calm thought replied,
“Ebemoon
must have dropped you in here."

“My head hurts, I must have landed on it,”
G’Taklar exclaimed, rubbing at his sore scalp.

They heard voices above echoing in the
cavern and they seemed to be discussing ways to eat G'Taklar.

“
It seems that a lot more than your scalp
is going to hurt if we don’t get moving. That sounds like numerous
souldead up in that cavern above us. I gather that you’re about to
be consumed in some ritual. I suggest you keep your comments to me
in thought, so they don’t hear you.”

“
What happened to Halvisun?"
G’Taklar
thought to Jatar.

“
I don't know,”
Jatar answered.

“
What do we do, Jatar?”

“
Don’t panic, remember what you learned
in the Tchulians’ cell, we got out of there, didn’t we?”

“
Yeah, just to become the main course in
a souldead’s dinner party.”

“
Feel around and see if we have anything
to work with.”

G’Taklar felt along the stone bottom of the
rough pit, but it seemed to be completely empty. He was so
concentrated on his search that he only caught a little of what the
souldead were saying, but the word 'squash' caught his attention.
“What did that one say?”

“
You don’t want to know, believe
me.”

G’Taklar shuddered, his imagination running
away with the thought of what the souldead were planning.

“
There’s nothing, only some loose
gravel
and
dirt!”
G’Taklar exclaimed, finishing his search of the small
floor area.

“
Then check the walls,”
Jatar
advised.

G’Taklar went to his right and started
feeling around the circumference of the pit.

“
There seems to be a section of loose
rocks here,”
he noted, feeling the cracks among the stones.

“
Pull them out, if you can. Perhaps
someone hid something, or maybe you can make a foothold
to help
you climb
out of here!”
Jatar said with excitement, he had not held much
hope that G’Taklar would find anything.

G’Taklar pulled out the small rocks first
then found that one large piece was loose. When he pulled it out he
found that it was
a thin,
yet
wide
piece of stone; he set it
down on the floor of the pit. When he felt into the opening he
found that there was an empty area behind the place where the
stones had been.

“
Maybe it’s a passage!”
he exclaimed
excitedly, hope springing forth.

“
Feel your way in, and hurry
G’Taklar,”
Jatar urged, expecting to hear the awful voice of
Ebemoon from above at any point.

G’Taklar scrambled into the low hole and
thought to Jatar,
“This could be a passage out of the entire
caverns!”

His hand touched something leathery in the
dark that was lying on the bottom of the small tunnel.

“
G’lan, it’s a dead body!”
he
exclaimed in disgust a moment later when he felt the shriveled hand
of the corpse.

“
Old, from the feel of it,”
Jatar
noted dispassionately.
“Keep moving G’Taklar, when they discover
the opening behind
you,
they
’ll soon follow.”

G’Taklar didn’t need to be told twice.
Steeling his nerves to touch the corpse in the dark he crawled over
the remains quickly only to bash his head into solid stone a moment
later.

“
Ouch, Vorg’s breath, that hurt!”

“
Stop wasting time and check around for
other openings!”
Jatar ordered, worry evident in the tone of
his thought.

G’Taklar sensed his concern and quit rubbing
his sore head and felt around the walls.
“Nothing, it’s a…dead
end.”
His own words sounded like a death sentence to the
frightened boy, his emotions had taken too many shocks in the past
day.

“
As I told you before G’Taklar, you’re
not dead yet. Get back to the opening to the pit so that you can
seal it up again from the inside!”

“
But what good will that
do
me? This guy probably did
the same thing, and he starved to death in here! There’s no
escape!”

“
I’ll guarantee you one thing, if you’re
already dead there will be no chance of escape, but as long as
you’re alive we might think of something.”

“
What’s the use? I should just let them
kill me and get it over with, starving to death is a horrible way
to go,”
G’Taklar moaned.

“
Look, G’Taklar, I heard the souldead
arguing about who gets your intestines and who gets to suck your
blood first. Ebemoon put in his bid for your brain, it seems he has
some affinity for sucking out that portion of your
anatomy.”

“
G’lan help me!”

“
He isn’t going to help anyone who gives
up. Now, are you going to do what I told you or are you going to
willingly let the souldead divide you up like a carcass at a meat
market?”

G’Taklar didn’t answer; he just crawled back
over the old cadaver and went back to the original opening.
Listening to Jatar’s suggestions he put all the small rocks in the
passage then crawled back in and pulled the large flat stone into
place. He used the small rocks to wedge around the edges, holding
the slab in place as it had been before he pulled it loose.

“
Good, now go back to that corpse, I need
you to search the body,”
Jatar suggested.

“
Why do you want me to touch the rotting
thing? Don’t ask me to use its bones for anything!”
G’Taklar
pleaded.

“
Do you always ask so many
questions?”

“
Yes, I do,”
the young man
answered.

“
He has clothes and there might be a
sword,”
Jatar explained.

G’Taklar reached the rotting body and began
feeling the shriveled corpse.
“You were right, it’s old, but the
clothes seem all right. G’lan, what a stench, I think I’m going to
be ill!”

“
Is he wearing a sword?”
Jatar asked,
ignoring G’Taklar’s discomfort.

After feeling around the putrid torso
G’Taklar located a leather belt around what must have been the
man’s waist.
“No sword, he only had a dagger,”
G’Taklar said
in disappointment.

“
A dagger, thank G’lan, your odds of
surviving just tripled; now we can fight if it comes to that. Get
his clothes off,”
Jatar suggested.

“
I wish you could do some of these
things, it feels disgusting,”
G’Taklar noted.

“
I am doing it, I feel whatever you
do,”
Jatar responded, feeling through G’Taklar’s hands as he
moved the rotting body around, pulling off the silky soft material
of the corpse’s clothing.

“
Conceal the dagger by tucking it into
the pants behind your back. If it comes to a fight the surprise of
you having the dagger might make a difference. I think
those souldead
can
see through the dark,”
Jatar explained.

Not long after G’Taklar finished dressing he
heard the deep voices of the souldead barking loudly above the
pit.

“
What if they discover the hole?”
G’Taklar thought in fear.

“
Unlikely, they don’t seem to be overly
intelligent and it obviously worked for that poor man back there,
though his luck ran out
afterward
.”

After a short
time,
the voices of the souldead went away.

“
Now what?”
G’Taklar asked.

“
We give them a little while to make sure
they don’t come back and check the pit again, then we go back out
and try to find a way out of the pit.”

“
Where they can see us?”

“
Yes, unless you’re planning on starving
to death in here like your buddy over there.”

“
My buddy!”
G’Taklar exclaimed in
disgust.

“
Just a joke, G’Taklar.”

The voices of the souldead came back three
times; several of the beasts had to see for themselves that their
meal had indeed gotten out of the pit.
Eventually,
they stopped looking.

“
All right G’Taklar, it’s been two bells
since we last heard any of the souldead nearby, they’re probably
out searching the passages for you,”
Jatar explained.

“
Wonderful thought, if we do escape this
pit all I have to do is
avoid
a horde of searching souldead who
have
pieces of my
body already assigned as their portion of the meal.”

“
Does sarcasm run in your
family?”

“
Are you kidding, cousin?”

As quietly as possible G’Taklar removed the
small stones and then set the large one down on the floor of the
pit. Once he had scrambled out of the hole he looked up toward the
dim patch of grayness twelve feet above.

“
Now what?”
G’Taklar asked.

Jatar didn’t answer; he was busy trying to
think of some way out of the predicament.

“G’Taklar,” a high pitched voice said from
out of the darkness above.

“
It’s Halvisun!”
Jatar noted.

“
What do I do?”

“
He knows you’re here and he hasn’t
called out the alarm, perhaps he’s here to help you out of the
pit.”

G’Taklar looked up and whispered, “Halvisun,
will you help me escape this pit?”

“Of course, that’s why I’m here. I’m sending
down a rope.”

A moment later the rope hit G’Taklar’s left
shoulder. He climbed upwards and reached the edge into the dim
chamber above when two very powerful hands took hold of his
shoulders and lifted him up and over the lip of the pit.

G’Taklar started to speak before he looked
up into the face of Halvisun, “Thanks, I couldn’t have
gotte
...”, but then he saw Halvisun in the
dim light and exclaimed, “Vorg’s breath!” He
leaped
back from the
horrible
snarling visage of Ebemoon’s fanged face and
huge body and nearly pitched
backward
into the dark opening of the pit. The big
souldead’s long arms grabbed him by the shoulders and steadied the
shaking G’Taklar.

Halvisun’s
squeaking voice said, “Sorry, I was going to explain earlier, but
my cycle was up sooner than I’d thought.” Halvisun voice came from
a second small head sprouting out of the massive souldead’s
shoulder. G’Taklar had not noticed it until the squeaky voice
spoke.

G’Taklar was horrified and said, “Vorg slay
me, you have two heads!”

“Vorg indeed, it is that evil bastard that I
have to blame for this condition. I’d let Ebemoon suck out his
brain if he wasn’t long dead and gone.”

“But you’re the creature who put me in the
pit!”

“No, that was Ebemoon here,” the little head
explained, bringing up his right hand to point at the
larger
centered head. The fanged maw snapped at
the pointing finger, but it was out of reach.

“He’s rather upset about my helping you
escape, but I’m in full control right now, so I’m not letting him
speak, but come, we must get you out of here soon or he’ll give the
alarm.”

“But you said he couldn’t speak.”

“Not as long as I’m in full control, but
that doesn’t last long. Soon he’ll regain complete control of his
head, though it will take the full change of cycle before he gains
control of the body. Now quickly, come this way.”

The souldead creature led the way into the
dark.

“
What do I do?”
G’Taklar thought to
Jatar.

“
Get after him, he’s your best chance
right now; just don’t let him know you have the dagger and watch
for any changes in control.”

G’Taklar hurried after the large beast and
soon they entered a passage where it was completely dark.

Halvisun put a
hand out
and stopped G’Taklar’s progress and said, “We
have a little time, so I’ll tell you what I want in payment for
helping you escape. Please tell me of the world, describe where you
come from, the people you know, what’s happening out in
civilization, that kind of thing. I’m going insane trapped on this
stupid beast’s shoulder. It eats people’s brains in an attempt to
get smart enough to figure out how to get rid of me.”