Servant of a Dark God (63 page)

Ke grunted.

“Handy,” said the Creek Widow, “isn’t he? Now get your sister.”

The Creek Widow joined Ke and Uncle Argoth off to one side in an odd circle. They began chanting—one would speak, then the other two would repeat it in unison. Talen couldn’t understand the words and realized they were in some odd tongue. Each one of them had turned sideways and placed their left hand on the neck of the person in front of them. With their right, they each supported the crown.

Talen rushed to River. The left side of her face was purpled with bruises.

Sugar had already set her tooth to work on the collar about Da’s neck. He could see his father was in pain.

When he approached River, she turned her head to expose her long neck. This time when he brought the tooth close, it did not escape his grasp.

However, it had only begun to work on the collar when River cried out. “Remove it!” she said.

Talen yanked the tooth back. “What is it?”

She gasped. “It was in me.”

To Talen’s left, Da fell to his knees, Sugar’s tooth still struggling with the collar about his neck.

“What’s happening?” asked Talen.

“Grab it,” Da said to Sugar, gritting the words out.

Sugar knelt and grasped for the tooth.

Da groaned in pain.

Sugar yanked the tooth back.

Da heaved great breaths. When he caught his breath, he turned his head to look at River. “You and I have worn the collars longer. The binding must be tighter. Be prepared: it’s going to take a part of you.”

“I felt that,” said River.

Da turned to Sugar. “Finish it.”

He winced when she pricked the collar again.

Talen looked at his sister.

She held her hand up. “Give me a second,” she said.

They didn’t have a second. Talen was sure the monster was going to walk into the chamber at any moment.

The Creek Widow cried out in delight. “It’s quickened,” she said and held the crown aloft.

Da gritted his teeth. His face was red with strain. “Now,” he commanded, and Sugar withdrew the tooth.

Still kneeling, Da ripped the collar from his neck. His face was sweating with strain. Blood shone in a thin line around his neck.

“Quickly,” he said and motioned to the Creek Widow.

She, Uncle Argoth, and Ke encircled him.

“But it’s gold,” Talen said. Not the black of powerful magic. “Are you sure it’s going to work?”

“I told you,” the Creek Widow said. “It operates on different principles, and it’s very much alive. Long ago, perhaps in a different age, three years of life were poured into it. The power of three years of life—you can feel it pulsating. It requires three now to waken it.”

Da stood and struggled with his chains, but could not remove them from the wall as Ke had done.

“Put it on me,” said Da.

The Creek Widow strapped the crown to Da’s head.

“It looks so flimsy,” said Talen. “What if it comes off?”

“Once the crown and your father are joined,” said the Creek Widow, “no power can separate them.”

Ke, the Creek Widow, and Uncle Argoth formed their odd circle again, turning sideways to the center of the circle, placing their left hands on the neck of the person in front of them, stretching their right arms out to the center of the circle to rest on Da’s head and touch the medallion. This time, Da spoke the strange words, followed in unison by the other three.

Sugar, her tooth in hand, stood in the center of the chamber like a guard dog.

“We need to get this off me,” River said. “The three of them will be useless once the bond fully forms.”

Talen returned his attention to his sister. “Are you ready?”

She nodded. Her eyes shone with determination.

He held her chin still with one hand and pricked the collar again. It immediately twisted and writhed.

River’s face screwed up in pain. She breathed in measured pants.

Talen pulled the tooth back so that the sharp head was barely in the collar.

But tears still formed in the corners of River’s eyes.

“Do you want me to take it out?” he asked.

She panted, shook her head. But moments later she sagged to one side, and Talen had to quickly remove the tooth or risk stabbing her.

In spots the coloring of the collar had turned ash gray. Yet he could see other parts were still very much alive, undulating as if it were taking long, slow breaths.

Talen saw specks of light. He blinked and looked down at the hag’s tooth. Had it affected his vision? He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and looked again.

A handful of shining flecks were floating in the chamber. They looked like dust motes, except they shone with their own light. What’s more, they seemed to be floating lazily toward Da.

“My eyes,” he said.

“Not your eyes,” said River. “The crown.”

There were more sparks now. Talen couldn’t tell where they were coming from.

The Creek Widow, Uncle Argoth, and Ke stepped back.

“The crown bestows its wearer great strength,” said the Creek Widow, “but it also calls forth a mantle of incredible might. It is said that the Creators seeded the world with power to be given to those of their choosing. And to those who respond to their call, the powers distill upon them as freely as the dews of heaven. Until then, the powers remain locked up within the earth and sea. It is almost finished. A few minutes more.”

This didn’t make complete sense to Talen. Didn’t the Divines wield great powers as well? And this monster was not something to be ignored. Obviously, all the power wasn’t locked up.

The sparks floated in through both entrances, but more seemed to simply spring forth from the rock about them. Talen caught a twinkle in the dust at his feet, and then the fleck of light floated free to join the rest.

The sparks coalesced into thin, whirling streams that were drawn to Da like water is drawn to the center of a lazy whirlpool. Da knelt in his chains as the bits of light flowed and clung to him. The shining flecks began to accumulate thinly in his hair and eyebrows, upon his nose and arms, between the very fibers of his clothing. Specks of light tinged ever so faintly with blue and yellow.

River put her hand to the collar about her neck. “She’s coming,” she said. “I can feel it.”

Sugar couldn’t help but marvel at the tiny sparks that suddenly glimmered and glittered in the stone ceiling, walls, and floor. Each would build in intensity only to break free and float purposefully toward Zu Hogan.

He was drawing the very might of the earth to him. Zu Hogan still knelt on the floor. She wanted him to get up, to take the tooth from her. She wanted any one of them to take it.

But she looked at the others, stooped with weariness, and realized they would not be taking the tooth from her. She would have to defend them.

Now was the moment. Her heart pounded in her chest. She was the only thing standing between the others and their approaching doom.

Things to act, and things to be acted upon. She was not going to quail. She had the tooth. She had seen its power work on man and weave. She was going to face this enemy head-on, just as Mother had faced that mob only a few days ago. Whatever came out of those entrances was going to feel the bite of Purity’s daughter.

She glanced at the entrance to the chamber that she and Talen had used. Nothing was there. But then it was so black she wouldn’t see anything until it was in the chamber anyway.

There was a slight breeze running to that entrance from the other one. The breeze brought her a strong whiff of sulfur and pine. And then another even stronger.

She turned. The monster would come from that direction, from the second entrance. She wouldn’t have much time once it entered the chamber.

“Talen,” she said. “Bring me the other tooth!”

Something flickered in the corner of her eye. And then the monster burst from the blackness.

She should have been more used to the sight of it, but the creature was even more horrible to behold than it had been in the vale. Its enormous ragged mouth. Its dark pit eyes. Her knees quivered.

The monster gave her one look and, in an enormous stride, flashed past. It swatted the Creek Widow aside and grabbed Zu Hogan by the throat.

Ke and Zu Argoth did not attack, but stood aside, slumped, the crown obviously having its effects on them.

The monster grasped the crown and began to tug. Zu Hogan clutched at the creature’s rough arm. The thin streams of sparks in the room had grown thicker, but now slowed their movement. Zu Hogan was shining with the flecks of light, but the monster grabbed the crown and began to pull. It was going to rip it off. And then it would kill Zu Hogan just as it had the Skir Master.

She thought of Legs and Mother and the tooth in her hand.

The tooth in her hand!

Her courage returned even if the fear remained. She cried out and charged.

The monster turned and caught her by the waist in its enormous grip. It felt as if she’d run herself onto a post. Its fingers, hard as stone, wrapped round and squeezed so hard she could not breathe.

She gasped for breath, tightened her grip on the hag’s tooth, then brought it down, stabbing deep into the monster’s ragged forearm.

The monster looked down at the tooth.

The tooth bucked like a fish and disappered into the stoney flesh.

The monster released Sugar. It reeled back, let go of the crown, and clutched its forearm.

Sugar turned, looking for Talen and the second tooth.

Zu Hogan spoke a word under his breath, and the sparks around him grew thicker. A low thrumming began to reverberate through the room. It built in intensity.

The volume and pitch rose, vibrating through her and the very rock about them. The sparks in the room multiplied. The air was thick with them now. The thrumming turned into the rushing of waters or a mighty wind.

Zu Hogan stood, his chains still binding him to the wall, and stretched out his arms. His face shone with fierce knowledge.

The whirling streams of blue and yellow sparks picked up speed, converging on him. The volume built to a roar. Sugar covered her ears.

Then came a concussion, an enormous slap of air that forced Sugar to stagger back. It was followed by a blinding flash as all the remaining sparks in the room rushed to Zu Hogan.

The thrumming and roar cut off, vanished, and Sugar’s ears rang in the silence.

Zu Hogan stood. From head to toe, he shone with a thin skin of blue and yellow light. Joy suffused his face. And when he moved the very air about him seemed to bend and blur.

Zu Hogan took hold of his chains and pulled them apart like a child might break a thin braid of grass.

The monster had fallen on its back, frantically clutching at its arm.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sugar saw the passageway beyond the second entrance flicker and then illuminate.

A ribbon of blazing violet flame flew through the opening. It was followed by another and another. Each stretched a yard or more. Each undulated like an eel swimming through water. The three ribbons of light sped about the room, hissing like the wind through dry weeds. One circled her with blinding speed. It paused momentarily as if looking her in the face, the hot white of its core fading to tongues of violet flame. It seemed to be whispering something.

Fear gripped her. These weren’t ribbons of some strange fire—they were alive!

The light in the passageway grew brighter. And as it did a thick knot of the creatures, blazing their oddly tinged light, swam through the opening to the chamber. Some of these were shorter than the first three, but most were as long as a man’s leg. Some longer. They moved like a school of shining eels, hither and thither, wrapping themselves around something at their center.

The school of light shimmered to one side, parting ever so briefly, and Sugar saw a glimpse of what it contained—a woman wrapped in undulating, living segments of light.

The first three ribbons swirled about Zu Hogan. In his right hand he held a long length of the thick chain that had bound him.

“Whatever you are,” Zu Hogan said to the woman, “your time is at an end.” He stepped toward the knot of light. But as he did so an arm shot out of the knot of shining serpents and pointed at Zu Hogan.

The school of light, paused, shimmered, and then a mass of the creatures sped toward him. The undulating segments struck. She saw one open its mouth, full of thin sharp teeth, and bite him on the throat. Another attacked his cheek, and then the great mass swallowed him like a storm, the ribbons jerking and biting.

Zu Hogan stumbled back, the creatures covering him in a thick knot. He flailed his arms, tried to pull and swat them away, but the creatures attacked as if in a feeding frenzy.

Zu Hogan yelled a word in some tongue she didn’t understand. Immediately, there was a flash of light at the center of the seething mass.

A number of the creatures flew back. She could see much of Zu Hogan now. Yet many of the creatures still clung to him, biting in fury.

Zu Hogan reached up and grasped the one clinging to his eye.

Sugar fully expected to see some grotesque remnant of his eye pull away with the eel, but when he yanked it off and flung it to the ground, she saw that both of his eyes were exactly where they should be—perfect, whole, and gleaming with purpose.

The creature had not penetrated the mantle.

He pulled another knot of the creatures from his neck and took a step toward the shining woman.

She was beautiful. Far more beautiful than anything Sugar had ever imagined.

She was singing furiously, holding her arms out. Whatever she was doing, she didn’t have time to finish.

Zu Hogan ran at her, weapon in hand. The light that covered Zu Hogan had extended down most of the chain. He brought the shining chain around in a side stroke like a massive whip and struck her full force in the head.

The woman stumbled back.

Sugar expected the woman to fall dead. The blow would have killed a bull. But the woman steadied herself.

She was dazed, it seemed. That was all.

Zu Hogan swung the chain again, but the woman dodged back. With a roar, he dropped the chain and charged. Midstride he reached down and picked up a stone and then he had her by the throat. Zu Hogan reared back with the stone. He was going to brain her.