Wrath of a Mad God (33 page)

“Impressive,” said Martuch to Magnus. “I must remember not to annoy your father.”

“Good decision,” said the younger magician, a little sur
prised at the Dasati’s dry humor in this situation. Of course, compared to the other Dasati they had encountered, Martuch was almost human in his outlook. But Magnus was equally surprised at his father’s outburst, and realized that Pug must have been concealing a profound amount of anxiety since they arrived in this realm. And since he knew that Pug never worried about himself, he must be anxious about Magnus, Nakor, and even that very strange young man, Ralan Bek.

Magnus knew there were things going on that his father had not confided in him, and that Nakor and Bek were playing some role that he could not anticipate, but he had come to trust his father implicitly over the years. A prodigious talent even as a child, Magnus had always been given the opportunity to master his craft at his own pace, challenged, but never overburdened, and that training, despite his mother’s often impressive lack of patience, had given him a graceful approach to a very difficult practice. Magnus knew someday he might surpass his parents in ability, but that was still decades away, and right now there was a very real question if he would live minutes, let alone decades.

Pug turned a corner leading into a vast gallery, in which a company of Talnoy guards lounged, apparently a reserve squad detailed to go wherever they were needed at a moment’s notice, for the chamber had a dozen large passages leading out of it like spokes. A few had their helms off, chatting while they waited, and once again Pug realized how much of their advantage came from the illusion these armored figures were the Talnoy of myth, the nearly impossible killing machines feared by all.

Pug didn’t hesitate. He raised one hand above his head, and a massive display of blue energy—a huge pale globe in which lightning danced—appeared above that hand. He hurled the globe into the midst of the Talnoy Deathknights. Sparks of energy shot out first one way, then another, dancing from target to target, stunning each warrior they touched and throwing them into a momentary seizure. Some fell over twitching while others stood upright as if locked in paralysis: fully a third of those in the company were incapacitated by Pug’s spell.

Valko and his men charged.

Taken by surprise, the two hundred Talnoy were unable to respond in any organized fashion. More than half the Talnoy were executed as they lay twitching on the floor or while attempting to rise, and those who had managed to put up some resistance were quickly overcome. Two or three warriors of the White assaulted each Talnoy still standing and suddenly it was over. Pug did a quick inventory and saw two of Valko’s Deathknights were dead and dozens had minor wounds, while the Talnoy lay dead to the last man.

Pug looked from tunnel to tunnel, wondering which way to move, and examined the markings above each entrance. In Dasati fashion, energy glyphs designating the tunnel’s use were inscribed within the stone, visible only to Dasati eyes, their equivalent to a road sign with destinations on it. Pug quickly scanned each and then he saw it, an energy glyph much larger than the others. It must be the mark of the TeKarana.

As if hearing Pug’s unanswered question, Valko pointed to that very glyph and said, “That way.”

Pug looked down the long tunnel. They were one long dash from the TeKarana’s apartment. He said, “Magnus should come up between us, for we haven’t seen a Deathpriest yet, and when we do, we may see quite a few of them.”

Valko said, “Your magic is impressive, human. If it can be used in a more selective fashion, that would be useful; it may be some of them are agents for the White. We have a few placed high within the palace, and they might have contrived a plausible reason to not be involved in the murder at the Black Temple. I trust some of them are still here in the palace, for as soon as we attack, they will join us.”

“One can only hope,” Pug whispered. “Still, we’ll assume none of them are until we know otherwise.” He motioned for his son to move ahead of Valko. “Keep me in sight but fall back to protect Lord Valko if you see the need.”

Magnus said nothing as his father hurried ahead. He waited for a moment, then set out after him.

Nakor waited, listening, and then he heard it. “Come along, Bek. We are going to go find you a fight.”

“Good, Nakor. I was very tired of standing still,” said the large young man.

They hurried along, half running, half trotting, toward the sound of battle.

“When we get there,” said Nakor, “can you kill all those wearing armor like yours and leave the others alone, please?”

“Yes, Nakor.”

“Oh, and you might want to take your helmet off so that Pug and the others know who you are.”

“Yes, Nakor,” said Bek, immediately taking off his helm and casting it aside.

As they neared the sounds of fighting, Nakor said, “Remember what I said?”

“Yes, Nakor. Can I go now?”

“Yes, go,” said the spry little gambler.

They rounded the hallway and at the far end could see a vast courtyard opening up to the heavens. Even from where they stood they could see that a fairly impressive fight was in progress. From the blinding flashes of energy and deafening sounds reverberating down the hall, Nakor judged that Pug and Magnus must be there, which was as he wanted things to be. He sensed that the time was fast approaching when all of his plans, plans that had been years in the making, were at last about to come together.

The only concern he had left was, would Ralan Bek, a total madman, play his part? Everything Nakor needed to have happen, the fate of three worlds, and the lives of everyone he had come to care about over the last hundred years, would come to nothing if Leso Varen did not do as Nakor expected him to do. There were times, thought Nakor, when being a gambler was not necessarily a good thing.

P
ug cast his spell.

An explosion of brilliant illuminations confounded the Deathpriests for a moment, which was all the time Magnus needed to lash out with another enchantment. Sparkling lights exploded from the palm of his outstretched hand as if he had cast ten thousand minute gems—diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires. But the beauty of the spell was in stark contrast to its effect, for it shot through the Dasati Deathpriests like minuscule razors. Orange spots of blood appeared first on their faces and exposed arms, but such superficial signs were irrelevant, for to a man their eyes went vacant as dozens of tiny holes were ripped through their brains.

Half a dozen more Deathpriests now hurried into
the room. They paused, cautious, and then as one began an assault on the rear of the Talnoy guard. Pug noticed that each man wore a white sash that had hastily been tied around his waist.

Valko turned as another figure raced into the room: a massive Talnoy guard, but this one was not wearing any helmet.

“Wait!” shouted Pug. “That’s Bek!”

Valko hesitated for an instant, then stepped back as Bek hurried past him, an expression of demented glee on his face as he raised his massive sword and swung it like a woodsman chopping timber. A Talnoy who had been aiding another in pressing back two of Valko’s Deathknights was sundered from shoulder to crotch and the two halves of his body fell apart in an explosion of orange blood. Bek grabbed another Talnoy by the back of the neck, as if he were a fractious puppy, and turned rapidly, in almost a dancer’s pirouette, throwing him hard against a third warrior halfway across the room. With a sudden reversal of his spin, he completely cut through another Talnoy, his blade sundering the warrior’s armor with the shrieking sound of tearing metal and a shower of sparks from the blow.

Pug stood back, awed. Bek was now a force of nature, something worse even than the most terrible warrior Pug had ever seen. Pug had heard from Tomas what a challenge Bek had been when they had first encountered one another, but now Pug wondered if even the legatee of the Dragon Lord armor would survive an onslaught of this war god incarnate. Certainly there was more to Bek than he had ever suspected, for it seemed that whatever was hidden inside him was now coming to fruition.

Valko circled around to where Pug stood and said, “No mortal can do this. What is he?”

“I don’t know,” Pug said. He could see that the situation was rapidly approaching victory, as the knights of the White were disposing of those Talnoy guards who were not throwing themselves at Bek to protect the TeKarana. Taking a deep breath, he continued, “When we first found him, he seemed a strange young man, possessed by some…agency, and we thought perhaps we understood his nature, but since coming here…I don’t know. It’s as if he’s a Dasati soul in a human body.”

“He’s terrifying,” said Valko, completely unaware of making the most profoundly alien admission possible for a Dasati Deathknight to utter.

Pug looked back and saw the others in the White company were also watching as Bek weighed into the fray, laying about with his sword as if he were a giant among mere men. He took wounds, but ignored them, and each time he struck a Talnoy guard fell. Quickly the Talnoy began to do something unthinkable a moment earlier, turning to flee. Bek crippled two from behind before they could take a step, then set off in pursuit of the handful that were trying to organize a stand on the far side of the room. In a half-dozen strides, Bek was upon them and with the efficiency of a butcher in an abattoir he finished them off in moments. Then the room fell silent. Deathknights of the White stood in mute astonishment at what they had just witnessed.

Valko said, “This will not last long. No matter how much confusion exists in the palace and the city beyond, as soon as we pass through that door into the TeKarana’s inner chambers, every loyal Talnoy guard and palace Deathknight will come as quickly as they can. We must move decisively and without hesitation.” He turned to his company, many of whom were barely able to stand, and said, “No one beyond that door is our friend.”

Valko looked at the Deathpriests who had joined them and saw Father Juwon, one of the first to begin his training to serve the White. He was as highly placed in the Brotherhood of the Dark One as any serving the White, and a powerful practitioner of magic. He hurried over and said, “Your mother and sister are well.” He spoke rapidly. “We located the traitor, a Lesser who served in the kitchen. He revealed himself to be a Deathpriest and did not die easily. Everyone you left behind is safe and the Bloodwitch Sisterhood is intact, and ready to serve when needed.”

“How go things elsewhere in the city?” asked Pug, ignoring the odd expression on the face of the High Priest when a Lesser spoke up without permission.

“This is the human magician, Pug,” said Valko. “And that Lesser there is also a human magician.” He indicated Magnus.

A voice from behind the priests said, “And I am, too.”

They looked around, and there was Nakor. The little man said, “I mean, I’m human; I’m not a magician. I’m a gambler. But I know a few tricks.”

The Deathpriests did not seem to know what to make of Nakor.

Pug said, “We haven’t much time. How are things?”

“Madness, beyond anything we have ever encountered, or even heard about; what is happening now to the people of this planet makes the Great Culling we recently endured look like nothing more than ridding a tiny bush of pests. Now there is wholesale murder around the world, Valko.” Juwon closed his eyes for an instant, a gesture Pug found very human, then he looked at the young Deathknight. “While the Great Muster waits patiently to go to the human realm and die on another world for the glory of the Dark One, tens of thousand of Lessers are being slaughtered everywhere.”

“Everywhere,” said another Deathpriest. “It’s as if no living thing on Omadrabar is safe.”

“Nothing is,” said Pug. “I know more of the nature of rifts and magic portals than any man living on my world or on the Tsurani world. This thing that tethers this world and Kelewan is like nothing I’ve sensed before. I can’t be certain until I get closer to it, but the only thing I have seen that is remotely like it was the death rift used by a mad human magician to leave Midkemia for Kelewan.”

“What are these rifts you speak of?” asked Valko.

Nakor said, “Be brief; we have little time left.”

“Rifts are portals, if you will, between worlds. Those I understand are fashioned with magic that is both powerful and subtle. But this one, used between our two realms, is a thing of death magic, necromancy of a power beyond my capacity to contemplate. It is more like a vast tunnel, allowing travel in both directions, and it is fueled by the deaths of your people. I think there must be a way to close it, to save my realm from the Dark One, but I won’t know until I reach it.

“The Dark One is a bloated creature of the Void, near-mindless in his hunger for life. The next realm, my home, is far richer in life. That is why he seeks to rise into my realm, rather than extend his reach beyond the Twelve Worlds.” Almost to himself he added, “The
only mystery is how he found the means to reach our plane from yours.” Pug paused, then continued, “The Dreadlord is seeking a way into my realm using the deaths of your people as a means. He has been devouring your people for ages, building up his strength and readying himself for this migration to my realm. He’s now using this wholesale murder to fuel the rift between our worlds, and doesn’t care if he kills every living thing on this world or the other eleven ruled by the Karanas in his name.

“He will destroy the entire Dasati race if needed to reach the next plane of reality. There is nothing that can change the fate of the Twelve Worlds unless we conspire to destroy the Dark One.”

Valko looked to where Bek waited, his body covered in orange blood, his eyes fixed on the doorway leading into the inner sanctum of the TeKarana. “Is he the Godkiller?”

“If he isn’t, I don’t know who is,” said Pug.

“No,” said Nakor. “He is not the Godkiller.”

All eyes turned to Nakor.

In amazement Pug said, “What did you say?”

“I said he’s not the Godkiller. Bek is here to allow the Godkiller to destroy the Dark One, but he is not the Godkiller.”

“I don’t und—” began Pug.

“There’s no time,” said Nakor. “Bek, open that door!”

Ralan Bek reached out and took a huge handle in his left hand, his right holding his sword as he prepared to visit mayhem on whoever waited on the other side.

Pug could hear the sound of metal bars screaming as they bent in protest, yet the fasteners that had locked them out now broke free beneath Bek’s powerful pull as easily as if they had not been there, and with far less protest than had any siege device or engine been used. Pug wasn’t sure that his magic could have accomplished the task so easily.

A dozen men in Talnoy armor waited on the other side of the door: as one they launched themselves at Bek. Two died before they could take a full step; and a third as his second foot touched the ground.

Now, Valko and the other Deathknights of the White attacked.

Pug turned around and around, trying to ascertain where the next attack might come from. The chaos at the door blocked his view for a moment, as he dodged through the carnage while Bek slaughtered everyone in front of him, and Valko’s men surged on either side, streaming into the room, their battle cries ringing off the vaulted stone ceiling.

Pug knew here he would encounter the most powerful of the Dark One’s Deathpriests, for they would be ready to defend the TeKarana. The throne room was vast, a long oval with a door at one end through which they had just entered, a dozen massive stone pillars rising on either side, and down at the far end, a mass of waiting men.

As Pug and Magnus hurried forward, they saw the Deathpriests who were gathered at the far end of the room, surrounding a powerful-looking figure arrayed in orange armor: the TeKarana. And between the TeKarana and the attackers stood a veritable army of defenders. Pug said to Magnus, “We don’t have time for this.”

Magnus said, “I understand,” and rose into the air, above the battle.

As with everything else in this dark and twisted world, the TeKarana’s personal quarters were vast. He sat upon a throne on a circular dais situated on twelve concentric rings of stone, rising from the center of the floor. Like every other room in the palace, the walls were bare of anything resembling human art, but here they sported trophies: the skeletal remains of hundreds of warriors, each still wearing their armor; a mute testimony to the power of the ruler of the Twelve Worlds.

Beyond the throne lay the entrance into the TeKarana’s personal quarters, where terrified Lessers and women of the harem dressed in seductive raiment peered through the door. Seeing Magnus rise into the air, many of these turned and fled.

If the sight of a Lesser flying caused any of the combatants to hesitate, they paid for that pause with their lives. Magnus sent lances of searing energy that burned everything they touched save the stones of the floor and wall. Flames erupted from the clothing and flesh of any Deathpriest too slow in erecting a protective barrier from the soaring magician.

Magnus had a mystical protective barrier in place, when the Deathpriests unleashed a wave of magic. Noxious-smelling tendrils reached out from their hands, long flowing ribbons of death spreading throughout the room. The Deathpriests were indiscriminate, killing defenders as well as attackers, for they knew that the defenders were not going to save the TeKarana, but that killing everyone else in the room until reinforcements arrived would.

Pug lashed out with a blinding silver-white flash that withered each tendril as it extended across the room and the Deathpriests shook as if in pain, some crying out as their spells were sundered, then turned their attention to the two magicians. Those able to respond sent forward a swirling cloud of black motes, as much like a swarm of flies as anything else Pug could put a name to, and he erected his own shield before Magnus and himself. While Pug defended, his son unleashed another withering attack on the Deathpriests and two more fell screaming as they erupted into flames.

Bek cut his way through the defenders like a farmer scything through wheat and the Deathknights of the White behind him spread out to engage the Talnoy. Valko moved to stand on Bek’s left, ready to leap forward and confront the TeKarana.

Pug and Magnus together were more than enough of a match for the Deathknights and father and son worked in concert like two beings with the same mind. Magnus seemed to know without being told when he needed to defend against the Deathknights, and Pug’s counterattacks quickly left them dead or disabled. Quickly, all magic threats in the room were blunted.

Within minutes only a handful of bloodied defenders stood protecting the TeKarana, a tall, massively built warrior, of the same stature as Ralan Bek. He held a sword almost identical to the one Bek carried, save that it was decorated with precious metals along the blade and with gems on the hilt.

“Your corpse will receive a position of honor above my throne!” he shouted at Bek, as he rose from his throne, descending the steps to the floor opposite the hulking young warrior. Pointing at Bek in challenge, he shouted, “Never has any warrior challenged me within my own demesne!”

Pug used his arts to pick up the last two Deathpriests and fling them across the room, ending their magical threat. He saw Magnus return to stand on the stone floor, untouched, though he like everyone else in the room was smeared and spattered with orange blood.

Bek saw the TeKarana’s challenge, and swept aside those remaining guards between himself and the ruler of the Twelve Worlds. He was unrelenting, coming straight at the TeKarana. Valko and the remaining Deathknights of the White finished off the remnants of the TeKarana’s Talnoy guards on the flanks, and as Bek lashed out and the clash of swords rang out through the hall, all eyes turned to the struggle. Two terrible figures of power now battled.

Pug raised a hand to add his magic to the attack on the TeKarana, but Martuch reached out and yanked him by the shoulder. “No! You must not interfere!”