Lady of Poison (32 page)

Each volodni they slew allowed the menacing twigblights to move closer through the crush. They didn’t have to get too close, though—the ones Marrec could make out were fifteen, maybe twenty feet high. Already some were leaning out over the volodnis, seeking to lash Marrec with claws of splintered wood.

Time for the bargainer to make good, Marrec decided. He screamed out, “Queen Abiding, answer to your final agreement. Aid me.”

The sky changed instantly, as if she had been waiting for the call, just out of sight. Where before was driving rain, lightning from the thundercloud, and the sick glow of the petrified forest, there was nothing but black. Tendrils of darkness reached down from that immensity, stabbing into the boggy ground like twisting roots, but more often spearing a blighted volodni or screeching twigblight. Darkness was upon them.

The queen had come.

The void continued to descend. The Rotting Man’s blighted forces cowered and screamed. They sought to escape, but the periphery was already void, so they ran back and forth. Vainly they crawled and clambered, packed into the narrowing space like swarming flies, wailing, calling upon the Talontyr for aid. Their cries were for naught. Some attempted to flee directly into one of the walls of advancing nothingness. In that shadow they found their end.

The lowering void contracted. Sight was taken from Marrec. All sound ceased. Even the sound of the cleric’s own heartbeat was denied him. Marrec wondered if perhaps he should have heeded Ususi’s warning about dealing with demons.

Hearing returned and sight, too. The wide lane was entirely clear of blighted volodnis and twigblights. Neither

the blood, the sap, nor the bodies of those already slain, nor the surging mass who a minute earlier had been intent of overwhelming Marrec and his friends remained.

Of the void, only a blot of darkness persisted, almost lost in the rain-streaked night sky, visible only as an absence when lightning streaked.

The queen spoke. “It is finished. If we meet ever again, you shall discover the fate that has befallen your foes.” Then the void, too, was gone.

The crashing thunder echoed hollowly down the lane.

“Forward, then,” urged Marrec. His voice was hoarse, rough from the fear that had sleeted through him before the darkness lifted.

No one replied. Perhaps all were feeling an emotion similar to Marrec’s. The cleric’s relief was tempered with the knowledge that they had yet even to break the perimeter of the Close, and already he had used up the one resource he had thought to unleash on the Rotting Man himself.

It would have to be his petrifying gaze, then, should he get so far, he decided. What an awful surprise it was to him that he would at last come to rely on the evil aspect of himself that he had so long sought to forget and suppress.

Their footsteps clattered on the wet stone of the lane. The tops of the petrified trees towered over their heads as they approached, the branch tips lost in the lightning-rent clouds. Marrec sighted a space between two of the great trunks wide enough to pass two abreast and moved toward the cavity.

They were in. They walked a narrowing path of mud, mold, and mulch of long-dead leaves between two great boles, each as wide and tall as a cliff face. The rain couldn’t reach into the tight space, and the sound of the thunder above was muffled. The light on Marrec’s spear tip proved the only illumination.

“This is the perfect place for an ambush,” noted Gunggari.

Marrec had entertained the same thought, yet they continued ahead unmolested. After about twenty paces, the aperture between the trees reached its narrowest, forcing Marrec to walk sideways. He shuffled forward quickly, certain that an attack was imminent, but no. The passage between the trees began to widen again.

They were through. They stepped into the Court of the Rotting Man.

The Court of the Rotting Man was a great plain encircled by petrified cliffs that towered into the sky. In truth, from within, the ring of colossal petrified trees resembled a steep caldera or crater heralding some ancient catastrophe.

When the court was the Nentyarch’s Seat, the space within the ring of then-living trees had been green and filled with garden paths that wound through groves of flowers and fields of fruit trees, watered by carefully maintained brooks that passed around daisy fields and under quaint stone bridges.

With the coming of the Rotting Man, life had moldered and gone to rot. The paths were washed-out mud tracks, smelly and home to worms and stinging flies, the fruit trees bore only blots of poisonous putrescence, the brooks were dry, and the flowers long since dead. Great

holes pockmarked the Court, throwing up great mounds of fresh, muddy earth in places, lending a cemetery feel to the entire space.

Carved back into the inner surfaces of the petrified trees were scores of doors, openings, and dark windows that hinted at chambers, halls, rooms, passages, and alcoves that could lie behind them. Catwalks connected passages from tree to tree. A veritable army could dwell therein: blighted volodnis, twigblights, blightlords, prisoners, slaves, and whatever other dreadful creatures the Rotting Man kept under his sway.

The center of the Court was where all eyes were drawn. In the Nentyarch’s day there had been a simple wooden structure built from specially grown and reverently harvested hardwoods. What had changed since the coming of the Talontyr? A great mist, seeping up from the rot and mound mud hills, obscured the center of the plain.

At least the overhanging and interwoven branches of the ring of petrified trees high above sheltered most of the court from the rain, though flashes of light, rolling booms, and the occasional fall of water continued to gain entry.

Elowen pointed the tip of Dymondheart at the central mass of fog. Only by moving forward, into the mist itself, could the cloaking fog be pierced and the center be revealed. They approached it, careful to keep away from mud that seemed too deep, or cavities in the ground from which the smell of rot issued too strongly. Unfortunately, they could not entirely avoid the stench of decay, but by luck, skill, or some other agency, nothing challenged them as they approached to the very edge of the mist.

Marrec plunged into the clammy whiteness, his companions arrayed about him, and Ash tucked safely among them. The stench of rot grew more intense within the mist, though perhaps the loss of sight merely intensified the other senses. They trudged forward, Marrec hoping that he was ready for anything. Again, nothing challenged their approach through the fog.

As they walked, Gunggari opened the satchel given him by the Nentyarch. He pulled forth four vials and distributed three of them to his friends, one apiece. .

Marrec looked at his, “What’s this?” though he guessed what it might be.

“The last four vials within the Nentyarch’s satchel. I perceive that we are about to come face to face with our nemesis.”

“What do these do?” wondered Ususi.

Gunggari shrugged, said, “I do not know—these last four were written with a label containing each of our names only. I inquired of the Nentyarch what these vials represented before our abrupt departure from Yeshelmaar. He indicated that each elixir was different, but each would provide a strength best suited to the needs of its named imbiber. I presume this vial, for instance,” Gunggari indicated the one he had retained for himself, “will grant me strength of arm.” He shrugged again, “But I do not know.”

Marrec palmed the vial in his left hand, retaining his grip upon Justlance in his right. His comrades made similar arrangements.

When at last the fog began to thin, the center was finally revealed.

The Nentyarch’s home, as described to Marrec by Elowen, was gone, with no evidence of it having ever been there. In its place was a lone ash tree—an ash tree of towering size, a hundred or more feet high, though still below the height of the overhanging petrified branches, crowned with an oval mass of sickly green leaves. The leaves hinted that the tree lived, but even so, it was afflicted. The bole was twisted, blackened, and terrible. The tree’s leaves seeped a sick fluid, and at its base was a massive swollen cyst, partially burst, though the poor illumination failed to reveal what lay within the cavity.

Immediately before the cyst was a throne of hardened but putrid mud. A figure sat the throne. The Rotting Man.

From where Marrec and the others exited the mist, they stood not more than forty or fifty feet from the throne and that which sat upon it, but Marrec couldn’t help but shudder when he saw the Rotting Man. To his right he heard Elowen cry out, Ususi curse, and even Gunggari take a deep breath. Ash apparently had no reaction, though Marrec didn’t take his eyes from the putrid seat.

The Talontyr was the size of a man, but a man wasted with rot, disease, and madness, from whose pores constantly seeped droplets of blood. The Rotting Man’s body was a battleground for hundreds, maybe thousands, of virulent diseases, all of which strove against each other and the flesh which hosted them.

The Rotting Man could not perish from such ravages. Such was the gift of Talona, the Lady of Poison, the Mother of All Plagues, and other names more gruesome. Rot was the Talontyr’s strength.

Before the Rotting Man’s throne was an altar of rough-cut stone upon which sat a crystal vase. The vase held a slender stem to which a single bone-white petal clung.

To the Talontyr’s right stood Damanda, glowering. She had reacquired her swarm aura.

Surrounding the Talontyr and Damanda were various creatures, all disfigured with lesions, pustules, and other outward signs of sickness, though of course in the Court of the Rotting Man, these creatures obviously drew strength from their condition. Unfortunately, the Rotting Man’s forces created a buffer too wide for Marrec’s special gaze to touch directly upon the author of all their misfortune. Among the creatures arrayed around the throne, Marrec recognized a green-tinged unicorn, a satyr whose eyes were gone but for oozing sores, a score of nixies—or perhaps pixies—each the color of night, a dryad whose ongoing wide-mouthed scream of pain was too raw to be heard any longer, some diseased wolves and bears, plus a few monstrous insects the size of men…

“Ash!”

Marrec glanced back. The child he had so long shepherded was gazing with apparent interest at the large ash tree. Recognizing it. Naming it. Ash and ash…

Before Marrec could comment or question the potential enormity of Ash’s pronouncement, movement drew his eye back to the front.

A bone-slender hand slothfully extended from the rotting garments that clung to the Talontyr. The pointing finger selected Marrec as its target.

A voice, hoarse and phlegmy yet resonant, issued forth. The Rotting Man said, “The game has been amusing, but it is over. I will take the child. Now.”

A beam of virulent power pulsed forth from the Rotting Man’s entire body, washing over Marrec and his friends before any could do much more than blink and draw a breath in surprise.

Marrec fumbled with his spear as his vision cleared, expecting pain, wounds, or worse, but he was fine. Looking around, he saw that his friends were unharmed, too. Of them all, only Ash seemed unsurprised. In fact, she had somewhere acquired a golden glow, a glow of health, vitality, and promise.

“So,” said the Rotting Man, executing a look so sour that Marrec’s stomach threatened to turn.

Struggling for breath, the cleric finally managed to find his voice. He said, “We’ve come too far to fail now.”

The unicorn warrior didn’t know exactly why the Rotting Man’s assault had drained away so ineffectually, though he guessed that already Ash’s nature was beginning to assert itself. He needed to seize the moment, salvage some time for Ash to discover the missing portion of herself. That, after all, was the reason they had come so far.

Marrec continued, his voice gaining in strength and authority, “We’ve brought Ash, the Child of Light here, against all the obstacles you’ve set. We know the girl is

but part of the Aspect promised by the Green Powers, among which my goddess Lurue numbers, the Aspect that was sent to end your reign here in Dun-Tharos.”

The cleric knew his speech was too short, but he didn’t quite know where to go from there. Ash was not taking any special action or initiative, unlike what he had imagined, except, of course, her mere presence may have been the only reason he and her other companions yet drew breath following the Rotting Man’s initial assault.

The Rotting Man hacked out laughter. Chuckling wet gasps of amusement, he finally said, “You have brought her to me, haven’t you? All my effort to bring her here, yet where all my servants have failed, you succeed. Marvelous!”

“Not true … you were trying to kill Ash. Kill her so the Aspect could never take full shape.”

“No, I’m afraid not, young simpleton.”

“You fought us hard enough just outside the ring of your fortress,” replied Marrec, confused.

“It is true I expended many of my servitors, many more than I thought I would, truth be told. I did not foresee that you would make common cause with a demon. If I had not thrown my forces against you, you would have begun to wonder why I offered no resistance here at the heart of my strength. You would have wondered if you were walking into a trap, which indeed you were.”

The Rotting Man went on, “You have something that I require. It may be that it retains sentience enough to protect itself and you against my direct touch. However, experience reveals that my servitors are under no such restriction.”

The figure on the throne oroaked something to Damanda. In turn, Damanda screamed, “Bring the child to the Talontyr; kill her guardians.”

Marrec brought up his left hand, his thumb already flipping the cork from the vial he held. As the creatures surrounding the Nentyarch surged forward, Marrec

gulped down the contents of his vial. Of his friends, only Gunggari did the same; Elowen raised her living blade and gave voice to a cry of challenge; Ususi began to incant a spell. Ash did nothing.

The rot-eyed satyr charged Marrec, its head down and the ram-like horns positioned to smash him. The elixir Marrec had just drunk, fruity and pleasant, seemed to open his sinuses and expand his lungs. The potion was nothing less than liquid revelation, laying bare all that was shrouded, even Marrec’s own clogged conscious. Facts about himself broke free from his subconscious and begin to bob toward his surface awareness—but he didn’t have time to take note. More than anything else, the elixir opened a door, however briefly, that had been shut in Marrec’s mind—it made a connection where association had fallen away over the last few years—it granted him a channel to Lurue’s grace.