Once A Hero (45 page)

"I'd beg your pardon, Takrakor, but had I known you had a ceremony planned in my honor, I would have been more considerate."

"Considerate, yes, I believe that is how I often characterize you." The Reithrese sorcerer bared his diamond teeth in a soundless snarl. He regained control of himself and shook his head. "You possess something I mean to have."

I raised Cleaveheart into a guard. "Come here, I'll give it to you."

"Droll, Neal, and pathetic." Takrakor reached down out of my sight and dragged Marta to her feet by her hair. She did not cry out, nor did she move to defend herself, in the wavering light that poured through the teeth I could not see her clearly, but the gauzy garment she wore revealed a lot or flesh that appeared almost as pale and mushroom-hued as that of the sorcerer who held her. "You recognize Marta, of course."

I said nothing.

The sorcerer shifted his grip to the back of her neck, then brought her face down to his. He kissed her savagely. Her jaw shifted down as he forced his tongue into her mouth, yet she did not push him away or struggle. I wondered at why she did not fight him or do something, and then, when a pitiful, animalistic wail filled the courtyard, I thought finally she had returned to her senses.

Then I realized the sound came not from her but from the black door in the mausoleum. A tall, slender figure marched and stumbled through it and across the portico to the head of the stairs. He stood tall and quivering, while twenty feet above him Takrakor abused his wife. I saw Aarundel tense and try to move from where his feet had been rooted to the stone, but his efforts went unrewarded.

"Run, Neal. It is lost."

Aarundel's harsh plea barely made it past his clenched teeth, but it brought a sharp laugh from the Reithrese sorcerer. He released Marta, and she remained standing behind him, his spittle running down her chin. Takrakor licked his lips, then smiled diamonds at me. "He wants you to run because I have given him a choice. To save his wife, he must slay you and give me your sword. To save Marta, you must slay him and leave me Khiephnaft."

I shook my head. "No bargain. I want both of them, alive, and away from here."

The Reithrese laughed loudly, but I could tell he forced it. "Do you think that if you rescue them, the Elves will be kindly disposed toward you?" He reached back and caressed Marta's breasts. "Do you think they will consent to let you touch a sylvanesti the way I have? Is this what you hope?"

"What I hope is that you've cleared up your affairs, because it looks as though I'll be killing you to take my friends back home."

"You jump ahead of yourself, Neal. If you do not kill Aarundel, or he does not kill you, I will slay Lady Marta here." He extended his left hand, and a dagger slid from his sleeve into his grasp. "It will be quicker than she deserves, but it will happen."

"Is this what you hope?" I mocked him.

"It is what I know and what I will cause to happen, even if I die." His face darkened and his voice took on a cutting edge. "I have already sent a message to certain of my brethren in Reith telling them I have Khiephnaft. They are coming here, now. Even if you were to kill me, there is no way you would be able to get your friends out of Reith. It is over, Neal Roclawzi."

"Strikes me those were the words I used in talking about your brother dying in the Roclaws."

Takrakor snarled and flicked his right hand in my direction. As if a puppet on invisible strings, Aarundel leaped from the portico and charged at me. He wore Reithrese ring mail, though his head remained bare. The barbed Reithrese scimitar in his right hand whistled as he swung it back and forth through the air. Hatred burned in Aarundel's eyes, but his brows slanted back toward the sides of his face as if he sought forgiveness for what the sorcerer was forcing him to do.

I noticed something wrong with Aarundel, but his first onrushing attack gave me no time to figure it out or to exploit it. He brought the sword down in an overhand blow. I parried high and normally would have swung around wide to the right to get my body out of line with his cut, but Takrakor's control took the edge off Aarundel's speed. I pivoted quick and tight to the right in a move that caught Aarundel's hip on mine and sent him up and over in a midair flip.

He crashed hard to the ground on his back. He hesitated there for a second, giving me a chance to split his skull from nose to crown, but I did not press my attack. I let him roll over to his stomach and scramble to his feet because that first pass had told me a number of things. If I could sort them out, I might be able to avoid killing Aarundel.

Aarundel was never a great swordsman—his weapon of choice was the ax that I wore on my back. I was better than he was at swordplay, and I had a magickal sword as well. Cleaveheart had already notched his sword when I parried him. I could easily do to him what Tashayul had done to me in our fight, which would leave Aarundel unarmed and vulnerable.

The Elf came at me again, but I parried his attack aside and forswore a riposte. Whipping my blade up and around in a grandiose slash, I rained three quick blows down at Aarundel's head and shoulders. He managed to parry each one easily enough, but each cut carved another piece from his sword. Like a woodsman notching a tree before felling it, I worked on Aarundel's sword with two other attacks, then I moved in close, bound his blade, and pushed him away.

What I knew about magicks could have filled a thimble and left room for an ocean, but I did remember that the small stones taken from the towers in Jarudin had a link between them and the towers from which they had been removed—a link that made magick possible. Takrakor's control over Aarundel meant he had to be linked to the Elf in some way. If they had both worn a similar crown or something else that bound their brains together in some way, the source of the connection would have been obvious. As it was I could not see Takrakor well enough to notice anything odd about him, but I spotted the difference on Aarundel as we stood face-to-face before I pushed him back.

Between his eyebrows, up against his forehead, I saw a scab barely an inch long and a lump beneath Aarundel's flesh at that point. I knew that had to be the focus of Takrakor's link with my friend, and as the Elf came back in toward me, I dropped my guard to invite a lunge.

The point of his blade shot in at my heart, but I twisted to my left and raised my sword arm up and over his lunge. As Aarundel overextended, my left fist arced out in a punch to the right side of his head. That staggered him and he began to fall sideways. I brought Cleaveheart down and sheared through his blade, then hooked his heels with my left foot, dumping him to the ground.

I pounced on him instantly and sat on his chest. I trapped his arms with my knees, then pressed Cleaveheart's pommel straight down on his forehead. The lump did not shatter, but the flesh split anew, and a thin sliver of a diamond tooth sat like an island in a welling pool of blood. Smearing crimson across Aarundel's forehead, I brushed the tooth fragment away and stood.

Takrakor stared down at me, furious. I shifted Cleaveheart to my left hand and filled my right with Wasp as the sorcerer started his turn toward Marta. I whipped my arm forward, sending Wasp up and up toward him, but Takrakor took no notice of my action. Intent on Marta, he brought his dagger up, aiming it for her soft belly.

Wasp skipped off a toothy merlon and tugged at the shoulder of Takrakor's cloak before bouncing off into the tower's shadows behind him. The sorcerer looked back at me with disdain, his knife frozen for a heartbeat. "Know that what happens now is what you have wrought."

"Neal, save her!"

"I can't!"

Looking up as I was, I saw it descending before Takrakor had even the slightest inkling of his peril. Leaping down from a perch higher up on the mausoleum tower, Shijef flew through the night and landed short of the gap between Takrakor and Marta. The Dreel's left arm stabbed forward and swept back. It caught Takrakor in the face and battered the sorcerer back into the shadows. With his right arm Shijef gathered Marta up, then the beast vaulted the toothy balustrade and landed in the courtyard with the grace and stealth of a cat.

I shrugged the ax off and tossed it to Aarundel as the Dreel ran over to join us. "Set her down, Shijef,"

The Dreel did as I instructed. "One claw, Shijef, carefully." I pointed to the scab line on Marta's forehead, above and between her staring eyes. "Cut the lump out. Easy, very easy."

The Dreel produced one razor claw and carefully re-opened the wound. As with Aarundel, the skin split cleanly and revealed a piece of one of Takrakor's teeth. I was about to order the Dreel to flick it away, but Marta blinked and raised a hand up to pluck it from her brow. "Leave this to me."

Had I been of a mind to argue with her about collecting souvenirs, I would have demanded she discard it, but the arrival of a half-dozen Reithrese warriors from within the mausoleum demanded my attention. Clad in mail similar to that which Aarundel wore, they bore swords and bucklers. They looked tough, but were coming at us from a direction in which we did not want to go.

"Shijef, I have an order for you. Will you obey it?"

"Obey always I do."

"You disobeyed me by following me here."

"Followed not, preceded." The Dreel smiled most horribly. "Obeyed I did."

The third grove being active with the colors of his fur suddenly made sense, as well as did his absence at my departure. It also explained how I managed to dismount and care for my horses upon my arrival in Jammaq without remembering any of it. "Do you smell the horses?"

"I do."

"Get Marta to them, and Aarundel." I glanced at my Elven companion. "Get going, I'll hold these clowns back."

Droplets of blood etched dark lines around the corners of Aarundel's mouth. "The Reithrese are more than just your enemy. Shijef, get Marta away from here."

"Go, Shijef, now."

The Reithrese approached us almost casually, as if already confident of their victory. I brandished Cleaveheart. "This is the sword that stole your empire. Are you brave enough to take it away from me?"

Before any of them could answer, I darted forward. Wrapping both hands around the hilt, I brought it across in a waist-high slash at the nearest of them. My foe dropped his buckler down to parry me, then screamed as Cleaveheart sliced through the small, round shield and took the lower half of his arm with it. His right arm had already started to come up in a thrust at my chest, so I spun inside his arm, brushed his attack aside with my right shoulder, and shifted the grip on my blade. With my back to his chest, I reversed Cleaveheart and thrust it back past my right hip and through his abdomen.

Letting gravity and his fall pull the dead man off my blade, I freed my right hand from Cleaveheart's hilt and appropriated my victim's own blade. Continuing my spin, albeit late and slow, I came around and, with the borrowed sword, swept aside a lunge at my midsection. I kicked forward with my right foot, catching the swordsman in the stomach. Breath exploded from him as he fell back. I split his skull with an overhand blow from Cleaveheart.

His brains had barely spattered the cobblestones when the third warrior came in quickly. He wanted to use his speed to defeat me and feinted at me with the dagger in his off hand. As I had with Aarundel's sword, I slashed Cleaveheart through it, then down into the warrior's left leg. He screamed as he went down, but caught himself on his hands. That presented his neck for me perfectly, and I did to him what I would have loved to have done to Takrakor.

My work done, I looked over at Aarundel. Two of his foes lay in a pile, and most of the third in another, with scattered bits between them. "Good work."

"And you."

I pointed to the dead Reithrese. "I assumed Takrakor had two dozen when he killed the Lansorii. Where are the rest of them?"

"I have no idea. I think some were sent as messengers, but the rest should be patrolling the city to keep Takrakor's enemies away."

I brought my sword up into a guard as I heard the clatter of hooves on cobblestones. "Mounted. This will be difficult."

"Anything to let Marta get away."

But Marta had not gotten away. With her bangs brushed back from her bloody face, she rode the lead horse into the courtyard, bringing Blackstar and the third horse behind her. Shijef jumped down from a rooftop, squatted on the cobblestones, and flicked dust and pebbles at the dead Reithrese. Aarundel ran over to his wife and hugged her around the waist, then mounted his horse.

I hauled myself up into Blackstar's saddle and patted the beast on the neck. "I have horses off to the north."

Shijef sniffed the air in the direction. "Lifeblack pools."

"We may have to chance it. North is where we can reach the circus translatio."

The Dreel shook his head. "Lifeblack deeply pools." He pointed toward the east and on around the compass. "And there. And there and there and there."

Aarundel frowned. "Surrounded. Takrakor's allies must have taken his announcement seriously."

I raised Cleaveheart in my right fist. "This sword is mine, and a lot of lifeblack will pool before it's pried from my hands."

Marta held her fist out. "Whoever is coming is very anxious. I can feel through this bit of tooth that more than one person is trying to magickally communicate with Takrakor."

I looked over at the Dreel. "Did you kill him?"

Shijef looked crestfallen. "Broken, not dead."

"Dammit." I looked around the city "There has to be a way out of here."

The Dreel's race brightened, which normally is not a good omen. "The Elven Way. Roadfast."

"We need the grove for that." I turned to Aarundel as we all snapped ourselves into the chains we would need to use the circus transiatio. "There's not a grove here in Jammaq?"

"In this necropolis? No."

"Use Roadfast, not grove."

I frowned at Shijef. "We can't use Roadfast without a grove, and the nearest one is three days' hard ride from here."

"We need to do something," Aarundel pointed to the north. "I hear riders out that way."

The Dreel rose up to his full height. "Use Roadfast."