Angus Wells - The Kingdoms 03 (45 page)

 
          
Tepshen
and Brannoc put a last effort into their rowing and the dinghy grounded on the
gravel. Kedryn moved past them, leaping ashore and seizing the prow to haul the
vessel landward. His companions shipped their oars and sprang to join him.

 
          
They
stood upon a strand little different to that they had left behind, save that it
was warmer and devoid of the flying things, boundaried not with slime-decked
stone but the shifting fog in which dark shapes moved.

 
          
"This,”
Brannoc declared uncomfortably, “is a dismal place.”

 
          
Kedryn
looked toward the fog. It seemed to roll in thick banks, moving inexorably
closer to the shore, as though driven forward by the figures pacing inside its
umbra. He took the talisman in his hand again and shouted, “Darr! King Darr, it
is Kedryn Caitin!”

 
          
The
fog roiled as though unwilling to release its contents, but a figure stepped
from it, treading with weighted feet, slow across the gravel toward them,
tatters of fog trailing behind, breaking like drawn-out thread. Kedryn
recognized Darr and a great melancholy swept through him, for the former king
was a sorry sight, his thin hair matted about gaunt features, his shoulders
slumped, the eyes he turned to Kedryn sunk deep within the sockets and ringed
with black. Yet his bloodless lips twisted in a wan smile as he recognized his
summoner and a voice near-hollow as Drul’s said, “Kedryn! Do you dare this sad
place again?”

 
          
“I
would free you,” Kedryn replied, reaching to take Darr’s hand.

 
          
“Do
not touch me!” The shade stepped back a pace. “Best that the living have no
truck with the dead, though my spirit lifts to see you and your companions.”

 
          
“The
talisman freed Borsus from this place,” said Kedryn. “I pray that the Lady
grant you the same release.”

 
          
“Mayhap,”
said Darr, listless, “but that is not your sole purpose in venturing here.”

 
          
“Wynett
is taken,” said Kedryn, “and we come to bring her back.”

 
          
“You
were ever courageous,” murmured the shade.
“As was Tepshen.
And this other, do I assume him Brannoc?”

 
          
“Aye,”
Kedryn confirmed. “And we come with the knowledge of Estrevan to guide us.”

 
          
Swiftly
he told Darr of the events upon the Idre and his subsequent meeting with Gerat,
of Qualle’s prophecy, and Brannoc’s tale of Drul’s sword.

 
          
“Yet,”
he concluded, extending the glaive for Darr’s inspection, “I see no way to join
talisman and sword
. ”

 
          
“I
know that legend,” nodded the shade, “and there is more I have learned since
Taws damned me to this limbo. Beyond the fog is a further extension of the
netherworld. Beyond that, another', and more beyond until finally Ashar’s
stronghold is reached. Within one of those dwells Ashar’s smith, who forged the
glaive.
He is called Taziel. How you may find him I do
not know, nor expect him to aid you. I applaud your courage, but advise you to
go back.”

 
          
“I
shall not forsake Wynett!” Kedryn answered fiercely. “The Lady will show me the
way to this Taziel, and I shill find a means to persuade him.”

 
          
“What
would you have him do?” asked Darr in a tone empty of hope.

 
          
Kedryn
studied the great sword and touchecfthe
death’s
- head
pommel. “Remove this and replace it wfm the talisman. Then sword and stone shall
be joined and defeat Ashar.”

           
“Then you will no longer carry the
talisman and thus abdicate its protection,” said Darr. “This was Ashar’s plan
from the moment he sent the leviathan forth. Do you not see it? His Messenger
failed his purpose and was destroyed; the god himself set up this game that you
should enter his domain. For all the love I bear my daughter I cannot advise
you to go on lest Ashar secure both talismans.”

 
          
“A
risk I must take,” said Kedryn.

 
          
“I
cannot dissuade you?”

 
          
Kedryn
shook his head.

 
          
“Then
you must traverse that fog that binds those damned by the Messenger,” said
Darr. “Ignore any who speak with you or seek to halt you and if the Lady walks
beside you, mayhap you shall emerge, though what you will find I cannot tell.”

           
“No matter,” said Kedryn, “you show
me a way and I thank you for it.”

           
Darr smiled forlornly and prepared
to return into the fog. “Wait,” urged Kedryn. “Would you not be free of this
place?”

 
          
“I
have lost such hope,” said the shade, “I am resigned.”

 
          
“I
should not have sailed the Idre had 1 not sought the advice of Estrevan as to
how I might
effect
your release,” declared Kedryn,
“and so Wynett would not have been taken. Whatever else I do, I would still
seek that success.”

 
          
Darr’s
gaunt head shook sadly. “Ashar planned this to enmesh you in his trap. Ward
yourself, not me.”

 
          
“No!”
Kedryn’s voice was defiant.

 
          
He
drove the sword into the gravel, leaving the blade quivering as he stepped
toward Darr, seizing the hand the shade sought to snatch back. It was dry and
frail as aged parchment, without the pulse of blood or life. Kedryn drew it to
the talisman, forcing the withered fingers closed around the stone. Instantly
the talisman burned with a fierce blue light, bright as a summer sky, growing
to enfold both man and shade within its luminescence. Darr gasped,
then
sighed, and for a moment Kedryn saw him, hale, smiling.
Then he was gone and the radiance faded.

 
          
Kedryn
stood breathless, for he had felt a great power in that instant, a sense of
love, of tranquillity, and he knew that Darr was brought to the Lady’s peace.
He turned slowly to his companions.

 
          
“You
heard the way?”

 
          
They
nodded, then Tepshen pointed, saying, “Another approaches.”

 
          
Kedryn
faced the fog, seeing a second ghost emerge, scarcely believing the evidence of
his eyes, for the proud Hattim Sethiyan was a miserable vestige of his former
self. Like Darr’s, his hair was lank and matted, his eyes hollows in a
bloodless face. He moved with slow steps, each one dislodging worms and maggots
from the wound in his.
back
where Brannoc’s thrown
knife had brought him down. He came
tentatively,
arms
outspread to beseech mercy where none might be rightfully expected.

 
          
“Help
me,” he implored. “In the name of the Lady, help me.”

 
          
Kedryn
felt distaste, and a measure of guilt at that emotion. “You embraced Ashar,” he
said accusingly.

 
          
“I
was wrong.” The shade that was Hattim fell to its knees. ‘Taws seduced me with
false promises. Do not leave me here, I beg you.”
 
 
         
“He chose this place,” grunted
Tepshen. “Let us be gone.”

 
          
“Please,
no!” Hattim wailed. “I crave your forgiveness, Kedryn. In the name of the Lady
I ask you to grant me succor.”

 
          
“Do
you call on the Lady now?” Kedryn asked, torn between pity and loathing.

 
          
“I
repent all I did,” nodded the shade, the movement spilling a vermicular flood
from his back. “I ask forgiveness in her name.”

 
          
“He
would have slain you,” said Tepshen implacably.

 
          
“I
was weak,” moaned Hattim. “I was ambitious, and Taws deceived me.”

          
 
“Taws gave you what he promised, I think,”
said Kedryn.

           
“As you love the Lady, grant me
what I ask,” Hattim begged.

           
“What do you know of Ashar’s smith,
Taziel?” It occurred to Kedryn that Hattim might furnish him with further information
to augment what Darr had imparted.

           
“He inhabits a cave,” said the
shade.
“In a place of fire deep within the inner realms.
The way to that place is hazardous. More than that I do ijot know.”

 
          
Kedryn
nodded thoughtfully. “That is not much.”

 
          
“It
is all I know.” Tears of blood spilled from Hattim’s sunken eyes. “I swear it.”

 
          
“What
do you know of Ashar’s designs?” Kedryn pressed.

 
          
“Only
that he sought information of you and Wynett, and of Ashrivelle,” the shade
responded. “I had no choice but to give him what he wanted. He seeks a means to
broach Kyrie’s barriers and to that end plots to secure the talismans, or trap
you in the netherworld. I know no more than that.”

 
          
Kedryn
studied the abject figure, pity overcoming the detestation he felt. He could
hate Hattim Sethiyan as a man, but this sorry thing was beneath hatred: he
extended the talisman again.

 
          
“It
is in the hands of the Lady,” he declared. “Let her judge.”

 
          
“I
asked her forgiveness,” said Hattim, and took the jewel in both his hands.

 
          
Again
the blue light flared, less bright this time, and within its radiance Kedryn
saw Hattim smile briefly before he, too, vanished.

 
          
“You
are too kind,” Tepshen remarked.
 
 
         
Kedryn shrugged, smiling fleetingly.
“Let the Lady decide. I ask her blessing on what we do—should I then deny so
pitiful a thing her mercy?”

 
          
Tepshen
hiked his shoulders once: a dismissive gesture. “At least we know to look for a
cave in a place of fire.”

 
          
“But
first we must dare that fog,” said Brannoc. “And it draws closer by the
moment.”

 
          
All
three turned to study the vaporous barrier which did, indeed, move ominously
closer. The shapes within were more clearly definable as human forms and
against the background of the lake’s lament could be heard a dull, angry
rumbling, as though a pack of hounds were waked from rest and growled their
displeasure at the disturbance.

 
          
“It
is the way we must go,” said Kedryn, though he felt an ineffable dread at the
menace implicit in that gnar. “Stay close.”

 
          
“As
if you were a maiden and I your suitor,” promised Brannoc, and moved to stand
shoulder to shoulder with Tepshen, so close behind that Kedryn could feel their
breath upon his neck.

 
          
Drul’s
glaive was too weighty to heft comfortably with one hand, so he rested the
blade against his left shoulder, holding the talisman with his right hand, and
paced resolutely toward the fog. Its advance halted as they approached, but the
grumbling of the occupants grew louder, individual sounds becoming discernible.
Mostly they were snarls or ululations, or such sounds as men make in the
instant of their dying, but there were words, too. ‘Take them,” they heard, and
“Make them one with us,” and “Living flesh.” The threat was palpable as the
heat the fog gave off, and all three felt the ugly stirring of fear as they
stepped into the brume.

 
          
It
reflected the light the talisman now spread around them so that they walked in
a cocoon of azure radiance, pressing closer together as they saw what lived
inside the fog. Ghastly faces stared at them, worms writhing from moldered eyes
and eaten mouths, ribbons of raw flesh hung from jaws, and hands flayed to bone
thrust out, beckoning or clutching, the skeletal digits snatching back as they
touched the perimeter of the talisman’s protective glow. The shade of a woman
cavorted before them, her
capering
an obscene parody
of lustful dance, displaying bloodied breasts that crawled with grubs, her
outthrust tongue licking over lips long gone into dessication. “Stay with me,”
she slurred. “Stay and be my lovers,” but she retreated before the nimbus of
the stone and eventually faded back into the mist. Others replaced her:
hideously wounded men who threatened, women who wept tears of gore, some little
older than children; an awful throng, embodying despair and hatred of all who
knew not that hopeless despond that was the mark of their limbo.