War in Tethyr (29 page)

Armenides stepped to the side. Behind him more crossbowmen aimed and loosed. Shield swung round, holding the feebly struggling bard before him. Half a dozen bolts struck the traitor. Some drove onward through metal to pierce the great orc's flesh.

"This way!" Zaranda shouted, pointing her bloodied sword at the entrance opposite the one occupied by Armenides and his troops. Chen had drawn her dagger and crouched beside her mentor, menacing air. Zaranda grabbed her arm. "Let's go!"

Though Chen complied, the ranger was reluctant.
Won't leave Shield,
he signed.

"No one's leaving anybody. Shield, bring a live one!"

The orog reached out a black-nailed hand, grabbed a nearby guard by the scruff as if grabbing a rabbit. Then he backed across the octagonal chamber, clutching his captive and the now-limp bard, looking like a child with two rag dolls. Shoulder to shoulder, Stillhawk backed with him, facing the enemy as the civic guards wrestled back their crossbow strings.

Zaranda practically flung Chen down the corridor. Shield and Stillhawk backed in as guardsmen finished cocking weapons and reached for fresh quarrels. Zaranda flung a handful of skunk cabbage leaves from her magic pouch, which Chen had brought her, past her comrades and onto the floor. Dense green smoke billowed.

Zaranda patted the air frantically with her hands, signing,
Down! Down!
Stillhawk understood at once and threw himself flat, drawing the orog and his captive down with him. Zaranda tackled Chenowyn and pinned her to the floor.

Steel bolts buzzed overhead to clatter off walls and ceiling. Zaranda lay a moment with blood drumming in her ears. None of the blue-and-bronzes had had the wit to reserve a shot in case their quarry was up to tricks.

"Run for the cross-passage," Zaranda hissed as she jumped up. Her voice was raw from breathing the fringes of the stinking cloud she'd raised. "Head left. Go!"

They did. For a moment Zaranda crouched, gazing at the body of Farlorn, sprawled on the floor. Then she followed her friends.

She dodged around the corner. Shield stood in the cross-passage calmly pulling a crossbow quarrel through his left biceps. At least four projectiles jutted from his body.

"Can you still walk?" she asked him.

"Don't fear for me," he rumbled. Beside him Stillhawk pinned the prisoner to the wall, his sword tip pressed to the hollow of his throat. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine," Zaranda said. "You're badly hurt."

Shield took her sword hand in one bloody claw, raised it to his tusked mouth, kissed it. "Waste no tears on me, Mistress," he said. "I'll lose nothing today that hasn't been forfeit for a long time."

Coughing and choked curses echoed down the corridor. Zaranda stuck her head around the corner. Blue-and-bronzes were braving the noxious smoke. Several had torn the voluminous sleeves from their doublets and tied them over their faces. Two collapsed, retching, on the floor the instant they came through.

Zaranda plucked another pellet from her pouch, spoke words, hurled it, and ducked back as the corridor filled with fire and screams.

"Hardisty," she said to the terrified captive. "The false king. Lead us to him. And no wrong turns, or the orc will twist your head off."

But he was king now, even if he'd had to crown himself, and would play the role to the lasts and stays. He had prepared himself a throne room on the palace's ground floor and a throne to go with it, and he occupied both when Shield of Innocence put his shoulder to the fancy double doors and crashed them open.

A score of blue-and-bronzes stood between entrance and king, shifting weight from boot to boot and looking nervous. Behind them Tatrina sat slumped beside the huge gilt-washed throne. When the adventurers burst into the throne room, wild-eyed and bristling with weapons, she gasped, leapt to her feet, and tried to run to them.

The king caught her wrist. "Where are you going, my love?" he asked, baritone voice as beautifully modulated as if he asked if she wished to go for a ride in the country. "It's treason to desert your king. Or
lese-ma-jeste
at least; I've never been clear on the distinction."

Zaranda pointed her sword at him. "Hardisty! You are deposed. Let the girl go and surrender, and we'll leave you with your life. Your freedom, even-if you'll help us stop the evil you set loose."

King Faneuil put back his head and laughed. His crown was a surprisingly modest circlet of gold. "Always fanciful, Zaranda. Might I point out that you're outnumbered?"

"Let's alter the balance, then," Zaranda said. She spoke mystic words and cast a pinch of sand at the guardsmen. Five slumped down, sound asleep, their halberds clattering to the marble floor beside them. The rest leveled weapons and charged.

Stillhawk drew back his bow and loosed. Not for nothing had the king spent years as a fighter. Already in motion as Stillhawk pulled his bowstring, he rolled over the arm of the throne as the arrow sang past to strike the back and vibrate at the precise point his crowned head had occupied a heartbeat before.

He came up with an arm around Tatrina's neck. "No, no," he said, wagging a finger at Stillhawk. "Don't try that again. Kill them."

The last was to his guardsmen, who were already trying their best. Stillhawk had re-slung his bow and was standing off three halberdiers with his long sword. Shield drew his two scimitars and began to lay about him. Zaranda ran straight at the guards. One pulled up short, clutching his halberd across his chest as if unsure how to deal with this menace. In passing, Zaranda gave him a jab to the face with the studded knuckleduster hilt of her left-hand dagger, then parried an overhand cut from a second foe.

Towing his reluctant consort behind, Faneuil dodged behind his throne and ducked under the corner of a huge tapestry depicting him, crowned in a laurel wreath, standing guard over a tiny stylized Zazesspur with sword in one upraised hand and a white radiance, representing Ao, in the palm of the other.

Zaranda slashed a guardsman across the fingers, causing him to shriek and drop his weapon. Another stabbed at her with his halberd. Zaranda beat the haft aside and lunged into a riposte that sent the tip of her sword through his throat. She was aware of Stillhawk on her left and Shield on her right working similar execution as they sought to win through and follow the king down his secret passage.

Chen had played little role in the proceedings. When she grabbed at Zaranda's sleeve from behind, the older woman's reflex reaction was a flash of irritation.

"Randi,
look!"
the girl cried.

Zaranda turned her head to see more blue-and-bronzes flooding the throne room through the double doors of the main entrance behind them, flowing to either side of Armenides, who stood with arms upraised, voicing an incantation.

By dint of long practice and hard-won experience, Zaranda had increased the suppleness and cogency of her mind enough that it could contain two fireball spells at a time. The effort in the thieves' foyer, aborted by the magic-deadening stones of Tantras, didn't count. She had one left in her, and she loosed it now.

The blast scattered guardsmen like skittles. A sphere of red flame engulfed the false priest. His flesh blackened, flowed, burned away-

Revealing his true form: a fiend with the body of a giant scorpion and the head of a bull, rearing eight feet above the rose-marble flagstones. His laughter filled the throne room.

"This isn't good," Zaranda said.

"Go!" Shield roared. His blades were in constant motion, flowing about his body in intertwining loops that struck down any guardsman heedless enough to wander near. It seemed impossible that any foe could strike at him through such tapestries of steel, but his breastplate was gashed, and his face and body bled from a dozen fresh wounds.

"Follow the king!" he shouted. "I'll hold them."

The orog charged. You're only an
apprentice
paladin, Zaranda wanted to scream. And Armenides must be a puissant fiend indeed: even with the aid of Cyric, lord of deceit, it would require mighty magics for a servant of evil to produce the spurious miracles with which Armenides had bolstered his claim that Ao had grown active in this plane.

But she knew
she
couldn't handle the monster. Any delay the great orc could inflict would increase the others' chances. Of success, if not survival.

Stillhawk cut down the last of the king's guards who still showed fight. The rest had fled, and the sight of Armenides's horrid transfiguration only made them run the faster. Zaranda flipped up the tapestry's corner with her sword. A door yawned behind. A damp, cool breeze, touched with grave mold and brimstone, blew out of darkness into their faces.

Zaranda saw one of Shield's blades lop a short-clawed nipper off Armenides's jointed forelimb. Her heart leapt. The creature has plenty more, she reminded herself. She bundled Chen through the doorway and down a steep stairwell. An instant later Stillhawk followed them into darkness.

He roared and swept his arms forward, dashing two assailants' heads together before him. A third clung to his left arm. He split his skull with his right-hand scimitar.

The man on his back produced a single-edged dagger and began sawing at the orog's corded neck. Without relinquishing grip on his swords, Shield grabbed the man with both hands and raised him, squirming, above his head.

Another guardsman, hair blackened, crinkled, and smoking from Zaranda's fireball, took a running start and thrust the spike of his halberd into the small of Shield's back.

The orog bellowed and spun, torquing the halberd from the guardsman's grasp. He flung the man he held into the face of the one who had stabbed him. Then he reached back and plucked the weapon from his body.

Armenides caught him from behind by the arms and the legs and hoisted him in the air as easily as Shield had lifted the blue-and-bronze. "You betrayed your people and your gods," the false priest said in the voice he had used in human guise, "and now I'll flay the flesh right off your soul."

Blood spurted as pincers bit. Twisting in the monster's grasp, Shield lashed out with his right hand and opened a gash across Armenides's cheek. The bull-thing screamed in pain and dropped its prey as black blood jetted, smoking, from the wound.

Shield landed on his back. A blue-and-bronze loomed above him, halberd poised for a downward thrust. The orog hacked the man's legs from beneath him. Then he arched his body backward, snapped forward, and so regained his feet.

The monster towered over him. Shield raised his swords and charged.

Pincers caught him by arms and legs, lifted him clear of the floor again. The orog bellowed rage. His muscles heaved with all their awesome strength, but this time the monster had made sure of its grip. Shield was held immovably while other pincers made play. They cut the thick steel of his breastplate as if it were cheesecloth.

The thing that had called itself Armenides of Ao worked on the orog for longer than was strictly necessary. Then it tossed the great limp shape aside and glided forward on many legs, to the secret passageway and down.

Side passages branched occasionally to the left or right. There was no ambiguity about which was the main pathway, however. Nor the right one-periodically they would catch a glimpse of Faneuil and his golden-haired captive, well ahead and below.

They had just begun descending a short flight of stairs when Stillhawk, bringing up the rear, grunted and fell across Zaranda's back. She screamed and lost her balance, and if she hadn't fallen against the wall she would have pitched headlong down the stairs.

A figure appeared in the doorway they had just quitted, raising a nocked short bow. Chen flung out an arm and screamed a single syllable. Energy darted from her outstretched fingertip and struck him in the chest. With a cry, he fell backward out of sight.

"I did it!" the girl exulted, grabbing Zaranda's arm and dancing up and down. "I hit him with a magic missile!"

Zaranda squeezed her arm and smiled. "Well done."

Stillhawk was on his feet, leaning against the wall. He broke off the shaft in his flesh and threw it down.
Let's go,
the ranger signed.

At the base of the steps a door stood open. They passed through to find themselves in a hemicylindrical chamber of glazed green brick, fifty yards long and maybe seven high. Lamps hung from hooks set high on the curved walls, their light hued purple by aged glass. The reek of sulfur was very strong.

At the far end a door stood open. They ran for it. Echoes of their own footsteps pursued them.

They had almost reached the door when an arrow grazed Zaranda's right ear. She looked back to see men with short bows kneeling at the chamber's other end and Stillhawk lying on his face with a thicket of arrows jutting from his back.

"Vander!"
she screamed, and halted.

Chen grabbed her arm. "Zaranda, run! You can't help him."

Arrows moaned past Zaranda's face and with musical pings struck the brickwork above and around her. The short bows weren't very powerful, and their trajectory was high; the low ceiling made it difficult to shoot with any accuracy even at this short range.

Stillhawk stirred, rose to his knees, his feet. He turned, took an arrow from his quiver, drew it, and loosed. A bowman screamed and fell with the shaft in his throat even as a blue-and-bronze arrow struck Stillhawk through the thigh.

Zaranda could stay and watch no more. Weeping, she and Chen darted through the door-and halted.

It gave onto a landing perhaps ten feet by ten. Around its edges was open air-a cavern, so huge its ceiling and sides were only hinted at by reflected glints of the red glare cast by a river of molten lava that flowed past the foot of the stairs, a hundred yards below.

Zaranda shook her head. "Lava?" she asked, incredulously. "Who'd expect to find live lava flowing beneath Zazesspur?"

"Look!" Chen called, and pointed. Barely visible for distance, dimness, and eye-watering fumes, the king and Tatrina were running away from them along the lava river.

Without a glance back to where her old friend was conducting what was almost certainly his final stand, Zaranda started down the stairs.