Bloodstone (26 page)

"Dribeck, if you believe this villain's lies any longer, you deserve the doom he plans for us all!" snarled Teres, who had found breath to speak at last.

A flicker of pain crossed Kane's features before he could recover his mask. Dribeck noted this. Kane's face now registered careful amusement.

"What's this raving?" Dribeck inquired.

"Her tongue is as venomous as ever," Kane remarked. "And after weeks of solitary skulking, she'll astound our ears with pent-up poisons."

Teres continued doggedly. "You believe Kane to be your trusted captain, don't you, Dribeck? Well, you're not the only fool in the Southern Lands; Malchion thinks Kane is his most resourceful spy. And we've both been bitten by this serpent in our midst. While Kane has played us off one against another, he's been master of his own game! In Arellarti he's discovered some monstrous power that he hopes to control--an evil power that will enslave all mankind, if he succeeds in setting it free! And we're to be first spoils of his conquest!"

"Now here's an amusing device," commented Kane sardonically. "Turn your enemies against one another, is that your thought, Teres? Your lies show great imagination, but you've spun them too fast--and too extravagant for credence. You would do better if you'd keep the fantasy simple, less grandiose." Doubt was whispering to him now. If this went much further...

"I'm surprised that the girl would offer such an implausible tale," Dribeck observed pointedly. "Unless, of course, there were some hint of truth to her distracted accusations."

"Only desperation and a quick imagination," Kane interceded hurriedly. "Your tale of phantom green radiances and the like furnished the skeleton for this hasty fabrication."

"I'll unmask a desperate liar!" Teres swore, rising on unsteady legs. "That remarkable ring he wears. He uses that ring to control Bloodstone--so he believes! But the ring is fused to his flesh, as his soul is welded to Bloodstone! Order Kane to remove the bloodstone ring and give it to you! Then we'll see how glib his tongue can be!"

"The matter is easily concluded then. Kane, pass me that odd ring you wear."

Nodding assent, Kane pulled at the ring. "Damn! It's a tight fit ever since I got the jeweler to cut it to size. That's why I so seldom take the thing off. Well, as you see, it's no more than a strangely styled ring that caught my fancy." He held forth his hand, brandishing the gem. "Now if we've indulged our prisoner's fancy long enough--"

"He can't remove the ring!" Teres persisted. "The ring is bonded to his flesh! Make him show you!"

"Let me see the ring, Kane. Give me your hand, if the ring won't slide over your knuckle." There was firmness in Dribeck's command.

"Milord," began Kane, feeling himself losing this duel, "it seems pointless to humor your prisoner's ill-conceived slander any further. You will naturally recall how loosely this ring fitted before I had a jeweler attend to it--overzealously as it turns out."

Dribeck's gaze did not falter. Behind him not a few of his soldiers had rested hands on swordhilts. He now recalled the significant fact that the ring's alteration had occurred while Kane was supposedly lost in Kranor-Rill.

Kane made a thin smile, acknowledging defeat, perhaps. Then his face grew savage with another emotion. "As you demand, I'll give you my ring!" he growled. He thrust out his left hand, clenched into a fist, the bloodstone facing them like a vengeful eye.

Some scrap of memory, some instinct warned her. Teres yelled, threw herself to the side, striking Dribeck's mount. The horse shied, sidestepping suddenly.

From the bloodstone ring shot forth a coruscant beam of energy, emerald light veined with scarlet, that crackled past the space where the two had stood!

Behind them, someone screamed in agony, men howled in fear. A soldier pitched downward in a contorted jumble, his flesh blackened as if lightning had blasted him. The stench of ozone and charred tissue tainted the air. Kane cursed in fury.

What followed happened quickly. Kane twisted toward Teres and Dribeck. Two of the mounted guard charged forward with drawn swords; Kane's attention was diverted to this new threat. Again a bolt of energy flared from his ring, and the guardsmen crumpled into a writhing, smouldering tangle. The foremost of Dribeck's swordsmen leaped to meet him and died hideously beneath the coruscating lance of energy.

Dribeck was not fool enough to face that which he could not fight. In the seconds that Kane's diversion gave him, he hauled Teres onto his saddle and spurred the stallion into the forest. As they left the roadway, a lethal ray shot past their heads and blasted a tree to glowing splinters. The horse lunged beneath the toppling branches, terror driving his hooves.

"Keep low!" Dribeck yelled needlessly. The stallion narrowly avoided collision with the trunks that flashed before them. Another ray of energy speared after them, laying waste to several trees. Its aim was wild. Kane had lost them in the timber.

On the roadway, alien death ravened mercilessly. The Selonari broke and ran, after a foolhardy rush to overwhelm this lone demon of destruction left half their number blackened corpses. Kane raked the forest with his murderous weapon, throwing full disorder to their retreat. Men died in terrible swathes.

But as they vanished, his killing rage was slaked. Feeling weak of a sudden, he abandoned the slaughter and withdrew to the slanting circle of stones, where Bloodstone could transport him back to Arellarti. Alone.

The mask. was shattered. A land was raised against Kane. One man and the dark legacy of elder Earth.

"I suppose we were lucky that Kane didn't have a bow," Lord Dribeck remarked with assumed casualness. "He never would have missed us then."

"And if your men had held their ground like disciplined troops, the archers could have skewered his treacherous heart," Crempra pointed out.

"Easy to say when you weren't there yourself," scoffed Teres. "When you see the bodies... It was demon lightning he hurled from the ring! It doesn't matter how well-trained or how brave your men are--caught in the open, an unknown weapon that burns and destroys whatever it strikes! Hell, anyone would run for his ass!"

A wild ride had brought Dribeck and Teres to Selonari that night. As they rode, Teres told a breathless narrative of all that had happened to her since she disappeared from Dribeck's chambers. Ristkon's part in that bloody escape Dribeck had already surmised, and he bore her no malice for the turmoil his death had caused. In view of the altered circumstances arising from Kane's conspiracy, Teres now found herself in the role of tentative ally.

Once in Selonari, she collapsed from exhaustion and slept soundly throughout the night, While Dribeck pieced together the fragmented information this reversal had presented.

With morning came a courteous summons to a council of war convened by the Selonari lord to consider the new menace of Kane's treachery. Somewhat refreshed, Teres donned the loose-sleeved shirt of deep blue silk, vest and pants of burgundy deerskin, which she found laid out for her. The fresh garments pleased her, and she spent more than usual care with her braid, wondering how such mundane concerns were possible after the horror she had known. An escort showed her to the council chamber. Waiting there was an edgy assemblage composed of Lord Dribeck, Crempra, Asbraln, Ovstal, and several other officers and counselors whose names she had not recalled. Adding to Teres's narrative, Dribeck laid out such information as he had gathered.

"Hindsight is of little use to us," he remarked, separating Teres and Crempra from the prelude to a quarrel. "Unhappily, hindsight is about all we have, right now. Putting facts together, it's obvious that Kane was indeed playing Breimen against Selonari for his own purposes. He provoked Malchion's invasion--which might or might not have taken place eventually--by plying him with all the fears, lies and rumors the Wolf's ear was ready to hear. To bring matters to a head, Kane pretended to warn Malchion of an assassination plot, then brazenly poisoned Ossvalt and tried to do the same for Lutwion--Teres has told us of his knowledge of strange drugs. When she fouled the net he had cast for Lutwion, Kane stalked him in the night, then killed him and his men with the power of his ring."

"There was another body found slain in that fashion," Teres interposed. "But we never identified him after the scavengers and the river had done their work."

Dribeck nodded. "I think I can hazard a guess. You mentioned that one of Lutwion's servants slipped away that night--you assumed he was the assassin. Actually I did have a spy insinuated into Lutwion's household, and the man vanished completely sometime about then. If I may theorize, perhaps my agent recognized Kane somehow, but with Kane's awareness of his knowledge. He tried to flee to pass on this information before Kane could deal with him, but Kane followed him from Lutwion's manor, and the bloodstone ring claimed another life that night."

"Why did Kane fight for us, though?" Ovstal wanted to know. "In the battle by the river, it was his sword and his leadership as much as any man's that carried the victory for Selonari."

"To the point that he saved my life," Dribeck added. "Perhaps a move to ensure my confidence in him." There was a strange tone to his voice for a moment. "And of course his position permitted him to pass scraps of information--mostly useless--to Malchion.

"But remember that Kane's is a mind of ingenious cunning. It shows in his entire strategy--the ease with which he manipulated all of us, from the moment he persuaded me to furnish him the expedition he needed to reach Arellarti. He might have written that book of statecraft he gave me at our first meeting. No, Kane's motives were more devious, and to make some bold statements, I think I follow his logic. Kane probably concluded that, left to the fortunes of battle, Breimen would conquer Selonari... and his judgment likely was sound. However, Kane saw little profit for him in such a victory; he desired a costly and drawn-out war, which would leave both powers too exhausted to pose a threat to him. Bluntly, Kane fought for Selonari to shift the odds--a great risk but justified, as fate proved. Thus he gave Malchion the misinformation that our army was encamped along the Macewen's fordings and lured the Wolf into a disastrous bridge crossing instead. And though both Riskon and I took credit for the cavalry tactics that turned the battle for us, the idea was Kane's; I thought his modesty most selfless.

"Ristkon's insubordination played into Kane's hands after the battle. I had privately announced my hope to conclude the war with a treaty of peace, following the collapse of Malchion's invasion. Kane's reaction to this turn of events was one you can imagine; it was his intent to prolong the war. Probably he would have attempted to free Teres, anyway, since she was the key to my proposed truce. As it happened, Ristkon set it all up for Kane to take charge of. He helped Teres escape, sent her off for Breimen with assurances that my offer of peace was only a mask for my own invasion of Breimen, then boldly advised me that her flight was obvious rejection of any treaty. The maidservants gave a picture of Ristkon's attempted rape, but they were buried in a closet when Kane arrived. So his part in the escape was never known, and I just assumed Teres had somehow slipped past us in the confusion of the night, which is about what did occur.

"But Kane hadn't calculated on the vagaries of the river. Teres blundered into his lair, and for reasons that aren't entirely apparent, Kane kept her alive in Arellarti. Meanwhile, he must have informed Malchion that I had secretly executed his daughter, thus continuing his game of stoking the fires of war between us. Teres has told us of the threat Kane mounts in Arellarti. If she hadn't had the nerve to attempt an escape, very likely we'd all still dance like puppets for this mastermind--until he chose the moment to set loose this elder wizardry upon our unresisting and battle-weary lands."

"The man is incredible!" Asbraln exclaimed. "Taken of itself, his conspiracy is a masterpiece of ruthless cunning, a work of genius! But aside from his political machinations, there's this insane plot to revive some centuries-buried alien sorcery! What manner of man do we fight?"

"That mystery may lie deeper than we guess," declared Dribeck. "Some of Kane's enigmatic references--seemingly mad statements--that Teres has recounted awakened several haunting phantoms of memory. I spent part of the night going through my library, and I found something which is perhaps more sinister than mere coincidence. I wonder if any of you have read the works of Kethrid?"

Crempra grimaced. "Cousin, this is not the time to parade your--"

"But it is!" Dribeck interrupted impatiently. "Perhaps a bit more attention to history would have served us well before now. Quickly, then, before I bore you, Kethrid was probably the greatest mind of his age. More than any other man, he influenced the rise of Carsultyal, mankind's first great city. It was the men of Carsultyal--and particularly Kethrid--who salvaged from the ruins of elder Earth civilizations the fantastic stores of knowledge that overnight lifted our infant race from the semi-barbarism which followed the fall of the Golden Age to the advanced state of civilization we presently enjoy. Without thought or thanks to those who gave us this learning, I might add.

"Kethrid sailed the strange seas of man's birth, explored unknown coasts, new lands... found there the fallen cities of Earth's elder races. His adventures made an epic. The knowledge he brought back to Carsultyal formed the core of that civilization, and from there this rediscovered learning spread to all of mankind. Of Kethrid's final voyage we know nothing, for neither he and his crew nor his great ship, the Yhosal-Monyr, were ever seen again."

Dribeck referred to a richly bound volume. "Kethrid had a close friend--an adviser, colleague, comrade at arms--a stranger who journeyed with him and evidently had a major role in Kethrid's discoveries. His friend was named Kane, described as 'a gigantic warrior with knowledge of strange secrets,' who was 'left-handed, of fair but cruel face, with red hair, and cold blue eyes whose gaze calls to mind the murderous fury he shows in battle.' Of his past Kethrid knew--or at least wrote--nothing, except an intriguing passage that reads: 'There came to my mind that Kane of infamous name, whose soul was of the darkness of elder Earth, whose soul quested for the knowledge of the elder creatures who yet walked boldly and not in shadow, gods and demons whose glory was faded; he who defied our creator in that forgotten age of paradise; he who was doomed to wander eternally through the savage world of his making, driven by his curse, branded an outcast by the mark of death that lighted his eyes.'