Depths of Madness (31 page)

A warrior screeched as a projectile struck his back and a blade jabbed into his stomach, ripping a hole for entrails to leak out. He would have clawed at his attacker, but the blade slashed across his throat, ending his roar in a gurgle.

S’zgul bellowed in consternation, demanding calm and reason, but to no avail. The others roared and scrambled, either groping for the edge of the darkness or slashing at random with claw and rusty blade. Two fell to their own companions, and thrice as many still hacked at one another and squealed.

The survivors tried to escape, but the darkness seemed endless. Finally, one broke free of the datk, only to find death at the end of two swords—one black and one gray. As he belched and flopped to the ground, his killers plunged into the globe of darkness.

With an oath to her father, the great Demogorgon, S’zgul snarled out a few syllables. With the power of the demon prince, the darkness vanished—

—just in time for her to duck the acid-smeared sword streaking for her neck.

Her bodyguard’s scaly head flew into the air, and another warrior jerked and spat as a rapier slit his heart in two. The giant and elf spun into the midst of the creatures. The gigantic black sword slashed in a great arc, beheading one lizard and disarming another—the hard way. If the cavern had been disorderly before, it exploded in lethal madness when the darkness vanished.

The priestess watched her servants fall, one after another, fast as flowing water. The speed with which the three moved amazed her, especially the white elf: the female lunged and sprang like a tiger, wounding and dispatching with unflinching brutality. What was more, the shadows swirled around her and danced about her crackling, burning blade as though to lap at the blood she spilled. A pair of warriors jabbed at her from either side with obsidian spears, but she twisted around one thrust, letting it stab into the foe at her back, and rolled between the other’s legs. She stabbed up and her blade went in along a weak spot beneath the spine and burst out beside the warrior’s throat.

S’zgul, who had fought countless hulking males and fierce females for leadership in the tribe, and mated with as many demons as she had slaughtered, was intimidated.

So she turned from the furious shadowdancer toward the weakest foe she could see—a half-sized creature, tiny and delicate. S’zgul could break the half-female in two with her talons. She hardly needed the three-headed, barbed flail spinning in her hand.

The halfling didn’t see her coming—so intent was she on slitting a warrior’s throat. S’zgul hissed like a desert cobra, lashed the tiny creature about the legs, and yanked her down.

“Gark katulu!” she growled at the halfling.

The little creature rolled over, gazing up at S’zgul in confusion, fear, and…

S’zgul hesitated, startled. “Daltyrex—naka!”

Then the halfling smiled—a hideous expression to the lizard priestess—and showed her empty hands. A knife slid out of her sleeve and she opened S’zgul’s throat in a flash of pain.

The priestess reeled until a dusty gray rapier split open her back, carved her heart, and brought only painful blackness and the hiss of her father, master, and lover.

Twilight took a moment to wipe the blood off Betrayal with the aid of the fiendish lizard’s half cape. It marked the creature as a spellcaster, likely, or a shaman. Probably the one who had dispelled Slip’s conjured darkness, though it didn’t really matter. All the lizards were dead, and they had killed them before an alarm could be raised. Good enough.

It was good to fight, as well. Having to evade band after band of these lizards had caused trepidation and nervousness, and nothing wiped away such feelings like a good, bloody slaughter. Twilight’s muscles felt loose and her blood was pumping—hunger was a thing of the past.

Had she been thinking rationally, she might have been disturbed that dealing death made her feel alive.

“You’re fast,” she said to the halfling, still panting in glorious abandon.

“All in the wrist—where the blood is.” Slip held out her hand. Her little dagger had disappeared.

“That snake said something to you,” Twilight said as she helped the tiny woman up. “I didn’t hear. What was it?”

The halfling blinked, gazing up at her with those blissful brown eyes, and shrugged. “I don’t speak fiend.”

Gargan’s eye twitched.

Twilight was no longer listening. She looked to the center of the chamber, where the lizards had been feeding. There, lying on the floor, was their meal. She recognized the pale golden flesh, the ravaged hair. Even the face, with its bugging eyes, one still present, the other a bloody hole.

“Gods,” Slip said. “Is that…”

“Not possible,” Twilight said. “Not—”

Then the emerald eye opened and it lunged for her, gasping and moaning. Two bloody stumps where hands should have been scrabbled at her chest.

“Taslin?” Slip gasped.

Twilight hit the forehead with Betrayal’s hilt. The body fell back to the ground, writhing, and she hit again. And again. And again, beating that head into paste. Dark blood splattered the floor, and she could feel her teeth go through her tongue, but she didn’t care. She pounded until those limbs stopped battering her.

When the animate priestess was finally stilled once more, Twilight could stand. She’d watched Taslin die, and she’d killed her again. She tried not to think about the implications of her wrists, severed as though by a knife and not by any lizard’s claw.

“We keep moving,” said Twilight.

The others were too busy staring to argue.

From the chamber of the slaughtered lizards, they went north where the tunnel arched up. It was widely traveled, as evidenced by the smoother floor and walls where feet and hands had worn the stone. The tempo of Twilight’s heart and the frequency of events were increasing’, and she felt driven, hurried. She had to stop herself from running.

“Stay alert,” she said. “An ambush could be around any curve. Swift and silent.”

Gargan and Slip nodded—they both understood exactly what she meant.

They ascended into a series of caverns that spread like a disordered honeycomb around them, walls painted with dried lizard filth and old blood. Bones littered every passage, all picked clean, as though gnawed bare and tossed heedlessly. The fiendish lizards were plentiful here—scores, even hundreds of the creatures swarmed the warrenlike catacombs.

Twilight’s blood was hot and Betrayal tingled when she touched the hilt, but discretion overcame bloodlust or courage. Erevan’s servant had many flaws, it was true, but no friend or foe had ever labeled her excessively valiant.

Erevan. Damn you. This is all your doing. At that moment, Twilight remembered the powers granted by her erstwhile patron. She had been so distracted that she

hadn’t given them much thought.

Thanks to Erevan’s blessing, she had a keen sense for items of value, and could meditate to find the location of a chosen object—or person. She considered using this talent to find Liet. It would not be a judicious use of her power—revealing him in the captivity of the sharn would not aid her. And it might fail entirely if he were dead. Either way, Twilight couldn’t bear to know.

Davoren, though… if Slip had escaped, why not the warlock?

Twilight decided, on a whim, to search for Davoren. Focusing her mind in the way Neveren had taught her, she reached out with her senses to find—

Davoren was not a prisoner of the sharn. In fact, he was only a little way ahead of them, ascending the caverns as they were. As her thoughts lingered upon the warlock, she sensed him moving, shadowing them from ahead.

Twilight’s eyes widened as she realized the only possible explanation. Davoren. Gestal.

“What is it?” Slip asked, turning worried eyes toward Twilight.

“Silence,” Twilight said.

They passed through the warrens, subtle as shadows. Had any of the others been with them, their progress would have been hindered, but these three were the stealthiest of the seven. The halfling was a thief, the goliath a hunter, and she herself, after all, was the Fox-at-Twilight. The fiendish lizards on guard were not oblivious, but the three could pass them. They stole through the lizards’ den, their eyes always moving.

The individual cells of the warrens epitomized wretchedness. Tattered straw mats rotted next to broken urns that must have been beautiful a thousand years ago, and now contained only mud and bones. Misshapen shamans shouted vile praises to a demon while hideous fiendish lizards crouched about cook fires, telling bawdy and violent jests in their clicking and hissing

tongue. Twilight understood, by virtue of the earring, but did not wish to listen. She didn’t want to think about what might be in those cook pots.

It was not difficult to find a tunnel that rose from the warrens, but it was increasingly difficult to pass by the scores of fiendish lizards that milled around the place. Dozens of times, the three ducked into the shadows or behind boulders to avoid detection as bands of the creatures appeared around a corner or lunged from a natural archway. For all their clumsiness and ugliness, the creatures were damnably silent when they moved.

Still, Twilight was determined. She kept the others hidden and, more importantly, moving. Her hand was never far from Betrayal’s hilt, but she knew they could not risk a fight—not when a hundred or more of the creatures could swarm them from all sides and still summon others.

Twilight had watched Tlork fight, and though she had not seen Gestal, she knew he must be a powerful priest indeed for a sharn to fear his power. The only way they would win such a battle was if they could fight it on their terms, on ground of their choosing. They bided their time seeking a way past the fiendish lizards, making slow progress, shadow to shadow, dodging small clusters along the tunnels.

Until a commotion disturbed the barbaric tranquility.

The buzzing hiss that went through the hallway was their only warning. Twilight managed to duck and pull Slip behind cover just in time to avoid Tlork, who came rumbling around a corner. The troll’s elephantine leg pounded down not a hand’s breadth from her taut ankle, but Twilight knew better than to flinch.

Bellowing incoherently, the thing that had been a troll smashed a lizard out of the way and stomped down the passage. They scattered before him like ants after syrup, fleeing into passages and holes even she hadn’t seen.

The only one who did not flee was the goliath, who slipped out of the shadows behind Tlork and padded behind him, sword sheathed. They had crossed twenty paces of tunnel before Twilight even registered it. Surely he was not thinking of taking

on the troll alone, particularly without a ready blade. What could he…

Twilight’s heart pounded in her throat. “Gargan!”

Tlork skidded to a halt, but the goliath was already gone, having faded into the shadows. Amazing, Twilight thought, the great camouflage his stony flesh gave him against the tunnel wall.

The fiend-stitched troll glared about the chamber, its mismatched eyes—one red, one violet—searching for the source of the sound. Then it snuffled, but that didn’t seem to help. Finally, it rumbled on.

A sea of fiendish lizards poured out of bolt holes, cutting the three in two groups. The creatures had not seen them, but they made just as sure a barrier for their ignorance.

“What do we do?” Slip asked in a whisper.

Twilight wanted to conserve her power, but she had no choice. She wrapped Slip in an embrace and danced into the shadows.

They passed briefly through the dull, lifeless world of Shadow, where the fiendish lizards became blurs of inky blackness and their eyes became nightmare spots of blood. With a little gasp, the halfling stiffened in her arms, but Twilight cradled her closer. It wouldn’t do to lose her companion in Shadow—after all, she needed Slip when they fought Gestal. And Twilight wouldn’t deny having become fond of the halfling—though that was where it ended. No ties, no love.

She pushed thoughts of Liet aside.

Twilight and her terrified burden rematerialized next to Gargan, and one stony hand shot for her throat. The elf flinched and the goliath caught her shoulder instead. There was no malice in his movement. He merely guided them into hiding.

“What by the Lady’s love life are you about, goliath?” she whispered.

The stony head shook. “I apologize,” he said. “Instinct. Forgive.”

Twilight pursed her lips. She did not disparage instinct—it had kept her alive over the decades whenever wits failed. Still…

“Forget it,” she said. “But you move on my order, and mine alone.”

The goliath nodded. “Yes, Foxdaughter,”he said. Twilight blinked. “Good,” she managed. “One thing,” Gargan said. “I kill troll.” “Well then.” Twilight turned to Slip, whose mind was far away. “We go.”

They followed the troll up the tunnel, which opened into a wide chamber, roughly circular, where the stalagmites and other cover had been broken away, leaving only jagged stalactites like fangs. They kept to the shadows and watched.

If the fiendish lizards’ warrens had stunk of death and decay, the stained hall absolutely reeked of corruption. Crude murals of human-shaped and snakelike figures engaging in acts of violence, cruelty, and depravity adorned the walls, painted in blood, excrement, and fouler substances. Gooseflesh rose all over Twilight at the mere sight.

“Let’s go!” Slip said brightly. The shadowdancer and the goliath hissed. “What?”

Tlork paced about the chamber, hefting the huge warhammer in his bony hand. Perhaps he was guarding something, but Twilight could not see any other occupant or another door. The chamber was wide and open, and Twilight had spent her shadowdance for the time being. There was no way around him.

“This could be a trap,” Twilight said.

“You mean luring us into attacking the vulnerable troll?” Slip nodded. “Brilliant!”

Startled at the uncharacteristic sarcasm, Twilight looked but found only earnestness in her face.

“Right,” she said. “If Gestal’s not here, then he’s likely trying to scry for us.” She fingered her amulet. “We go quick and quiet, and put the troll down without alarm, to save the surprise. Gargan first, me second, Slip as reserve. Agreed?”