The Alabaster Staff (40 page)

From the shadows to the side of the Tiamatan line, Kehrsyn watched the confrontation. Tiglath showed strain. The side of her mouth pulled back into a rictus snarl, her eyes narrowed further, and sweat began to trickle down her face. Gilgeam leaned farther forward toward the priestess, his bare feet scrabbling on the slick cobbles. His muscles tensed and flexed beneath his golden skin, and his toes pried up a cobble from the sheer power of his body pushing forward against the magical resistance. He stumbled, but then his feet found extra hold, planted in the empty socket left by the paving stone. He inched closer to Tiglath and strained his arms to reach her.

“Strike him,” growled Tiglath through clenched teeth.

“This is your chance to prove you have the strength to lead us,” responded the high-browed, bulbous-nosed cultist to Tiglath’s right. “You’re doing well so far. Don’t throw it away by crying for help.”

Kehrsyn blanched.

With an irritated growl, Demok stalked out from the shadows beside Kehrsyn and moved behind Gilgeam.

For just an instant, Tiglath glanced at the man who had spoken.

With a victorious howl from the grave, Gilgeam leaped.

Gilgeam’s leap seemed slow, as if seen in a dream, and Tiglath wasn’t sure if it was because she was in such a state of excitement or if the magical effects of the staff actually slowed Gilgeam’s flight through the air.

He landed on the priestess, driving her to her knees. His eyes, inches from hers, had a strange look to them, like he saw nothing but sensed everything. Just as she recovered her balance, his right hand clubbed at her, a horse’s kick smashing her shield back against her chest. The shield buckled with the impact, and her entire arm went mercifully numb. His left hand grabbed her right forearm, squeezed, and twisted. She fought to hold onto the Alabaster Staff, but she felt the bones in her arm snap. Pain shot up her arm, and the staff tumbled from her nerveless hand and clattered on the rain-washed cobbles, its magical glow showing strangely blue in the firelit night.

Gilgeam howled—a grotesque, burbling noise from a slack mouth that smelled of myrrh and mold—and used Tiglath’s broken arm to drive her to the ground.

So this is it, she thought. After all this time, he finally kills me.

She spat in the god-king’s lifeless face.

Then she saw Demok loom over him, his sword raised
high. He struck Gilgeam in the shoulder with a mighty blow of his long sword, but the edge hardly bit the flesh. Gilgeam wildly swung one arm backward, catching Demok in the ribs and sending him tumbling away.

Finally seeing his opportunity to supplant Tiglath as the leader of the Tiamatans, Horat snatched up the Alabaster Staff from where it lay. He felt the raw power of the wand, the weight of its age, and the surge of potential.

“Kill him!” he cried to the others, gesturing at Gilgeam.

The assembled Tiamatans obeyed his command. They encircled Gilgeam and lay into him with picks and swords and maces. It was a peculiar sound, more like a mining crew than a battle. A battle had a lot of screams and yelling, but here one side only rarely made noise, and the mortal soldiers, when struck by Gilgeam, often had no voice left.

With the others doing his bidding, Horat stepped back and aimed the slender wand at the body of Gibbur where he had been felled. Magical streams of energy curled from the carved runes and Gibbur began to twitch. He climbed back to his feet and stared at Horat with vacant, obedient eyes.

Horat laughed, a loud, glorious peal—he knew the power of the staff, a far greater power than he had imagined, and it felt good to let it channel through his soul. He’d been aide to a sodden cow of a priestess long enough. No more gutless decisions. He ruled the Tiamatans. And with this staff, come morning, the Tiamatans would rule Unther!

Kehrsyn, hoping the Tiamatan assault could bring the god-king down, scuttled over to Demok’s side.

“That’s not meat,” he grunted as he staggered to his feet. “Feels like clay.”

“He’s made of clay?” gasped Kehrsyn.

Demok gave her a wearying look and said, “He’s made of god!”

Kehrsyn looked over at the melee and saw one of the Tiamatans surge upward two feet in the air, his head thrown way back on his broken neck. There was another animal roar and a metal impact, and Kehrsyn saw several of the Tiamatans along one side stagger back from the force of Gilgeam’s strength.

The man with the wand aimed it in the direction of Gilgeam and began chanting a prayer to Tiamat. Beyond him, Kehrsyn saw Gibbur, gripping his sword inexpertly and shuffling toward the melee.

“In the name of Tiamat, the all-powerful Dragon Queen,” Tiglath’s rebellious lieutenant shouted, “I command you, Gilgeam, to cease your resistance and obey your new master!”

Gilgeam roared his displeasure and struck one of the Tiamatans so forcibly that his fellows behind were knocked off their feet, creating a breach in the circle of armored warriors, a breach that led straight to the one with the Alabaster Staff. Gilgeam stepped out of that gap, stomping one foot upon the throat of a fallen cultist, killing him.

As Gilgeam stepped forward, the circle of Tiamatans moved with him, though for the moment they did not engage. They left behind a number of mangled bodies, most of which did not move. Demok and Kehrsyn ran over to where Tiglath had fallen.

Tiglath cursed the usurper Horat for a fool, dividing their forces at that crucial moment against an enemy far more important than his own designs for power. She
cursed herself, as well, for letting his ill-timed ploy distract her from her true duty.

She lay on the ground, holding her shield up with her numb left arm while using her feet and her right elbow to try to crawl out of the melee. She felt Gilgeam strike her shield again, but then a veritable stampede of metal-shod feet surrounded them both. She winced, her eyes almost closed, as the cleated boots scrabbled for traction a hair’s breadth from her face.

She heard scuffling, impacts, and a non-stop stream of grunts and curses as her people—if indeed she could call them that anymore—battled the monster. The sounds were punctuated by fierce impacts as Gilgeam claimed victim after victim. One of the unfortunates fell across her legs. His angry face landed nose-first on the pavement beside her, bouncing none too gently. Drool and blood flowed slowly from his open mouth.

With one arm numb and encumbered by a shield in the midst of a tight melee and the other broken outright, she could not shove the armored corpse off her, so she resorted to keeping as small as possible and using her shield to protect her head from being stepped upon or struck by an errant blow.

After what seemed an eternity of stomping feet and meaty blows, the melee moved away from Tiglath, leaving her gasping in pain on the cold, wet cobbles. Her tiny dragonet alighted on her helmet and began licking her face.

Through the flaring haze of pain, she saw two silhouettes kneel beside her.

“Are you all right?” asked Kehrsyn.

Tiglath nodded. She knew it was not convincing.

Demok kicked the corpse off her, and she rolled onto her back with a sigh of relief and exhaustion. He kneeled by her head.

“My blade,” he ordered. “Enchant it!”

Enchant his blade? thought Tiglath. That would take a
season or more … No, she corrected herself, he means
bless
it. Confer upon it the divine prowess of Tiamat, Queen of Dragons, that, imbued with her divine wrath, his bare steel might cleave the useless flesh of the god-king. There was just one problem …

“You don’t serve Tiamat,” gasped Tiglath.

“I don’t care,” said Demok.

Tiglath tried to ponder whether it might work, whether it might be sacrilege for her to do that, but her pain was too great.

“Good enough,” she muttered.

She shucked the shield from her left arm with a few careless flailings and reached for the chain around her neck. She felt along the length of the chain for the holy symbol that dangled there. She held it forth and touched Demok’s blade.

“May Tiamat,” she slurred, trying to keep her voice steady, “as well as whichever deity you follow, guide thy blade that we might smite our mutual foe. May the strength of the dragon be yours.”

As Tiglath prayed, Kehrsyn looked over to where the remaining Tiamatans fought against Gilgeam. She saw the god-king grab the one with the Alabaster Staff by the hips. The Tiamatan screamed in terror as he looked into Gilgeam’s undead face. Gilgeam lifted him up and slung him down, crushing him headfirst onto the cobbles, abruptly ending his scream. She closed her eyes, glad that the sound of crunching metal drowned out the other, more visceral noises.

The Tiamatan closest to Gilgeam took a step back. His show of fear spread quickly, and the other Tiamatans who still had their feet all began giving ground. Gilgeam grinned at them, and, though his flesh was pockmarked by
numerous dents and gashes from the Tiamatan weapons, he seemed to have no discomfort.

“We’re running out of time and allies,” said Kehrsyn, deeply worried.

Even as she spoke, Demok moved forward, waving his sword, gripping it with both hands for extra power. As the blade moved, Kehrsyn saw tracers of divine energy glittering in its wake.