Chains of a Dark Goddess (13 page)

“Good. They should fear me.”

“Master,” Esha asked nervously, “why’re you doing this? Why are you serving Harmulkot? This all seems like a lot of trouble, and it doesn’t sound like we’re likely to succeed.”

Breskaro stared into her golden eyes. He had no reason to trust the strange girl. In fact, he had plenty of reasons
not
to trust her. She had more skill, nerve, and competence than most grown men he knew. And there was something else, though what, he wasn’t sure. 

But he couldn’t help but trust her. She was clearly devoted to him for saving her life. And what could it hurt? If she was going to betray him, she would’ve done so by now. And even if she tried, she was just a girl. No matter how talented she was, she couldn’t disrupt his plans.

“I’m serving Harmulkot so that I can restore my daughter’s health. She is the reason I came back from the Shadowland. And if I can exact some vengeance on Seshalla and my former friends who betrayed me in the process, so much the better.”

Breskaro explained to Esha all the details of why he had returned and what had happened to Orisala. “Don’t tell the others of this. Say nothing more to them than what I already have.”

“You are a good man, master. I’d have thought that a dead man would be evil, but you aren’t.”

“I have done evil things already,” he told her. “You’ve seen this. And I
will
do more.”

She shrugged. “If you must.”

~~~

On the morning of the third day, they spotted their first sign of an ancient civilization: a toppled stone pillar shattered in fragments. In its day it would have stood over forty feet high. Now it was covered in moss, shrouded in vines, and half-buried in the black mud of Peithoom.

“We’re getting close,” Kriba said through Esha.

Later that day, as the sun was setting, they reached a mass of stone ruins jutting up from the marsh. On a raised, dry area stood the remains of a temple complex.

“At least we’ll have a bit of shelter,” said Perolo with relief. “Has to be drier than where we’ve been sleeping.

Firrus hefted his pack higher and increased his pace. Perolo matched him. “First one there, eh?”

Breskaro froze. “Stop,” he whispered.

Everyone obeyed, even the guides.

Breskaro muttered the
spell of sensing presences
. “Damn.”

“What is it master?” Esha asked.

“Must be dozens of them out here. Not far away. I don’t think they’re quite ... human.”

Breskaro drew his sword. Perolo and Firrus did the same. Esha dug her sling out from her pack and stepped to the side so she’d have more room to work. The guides backed away.

Dozens of beings charged out from the ruins, leapt out from behind trees, and burst out of the pools of water surrounding Breskaro and his companions. The toad-like beings stood upright and were shorter and stockier than most humans. Their bodies were slimy, and bulbous, yellow eyes protruded from the tops of their heads. Translucent fins flared out from the sides of their heads. Webs stretched between their fingers and toes.

“Batrakosians!” Firrus spat as the beings closed on them. “
They’re real
!”

Perolo rolled his neck, loosening his muscles. “Looks like gramps wasn’t full of it.”

The batrakosians wore crude loincloths with bits of armor, corded reeds and bark haphazardly tied here and there. They carried clubs spiked with sharp stones. Croaking a deafening, savage ululation, they charged toward the strangers who had dared to enter their territory.

Breskaro took a few steps back and began muttering a spell. But before he could finish, an unexpected attack knocked him down.

Chapter 19

Deeply focused on shaping the mystic energies of a spell, Breskaro never heard the patter of Zibu's charge. The swamp-guide shouldered into his lower back and knocked him facedown. Breskaro grunted in surprise. None of his other companions noticed this betrayal. Their attention was focused on the croaking mass of batrakosians charging toward them.

Disoriented by the sudden break in the magical energies he was summoning, Breskaro started to get up, but Zibu kneeled against him while Kriba raised his sword in both hands and plunged it down. The blade pierced through Breskaro’s armor and tore all the way through him, pinning him to the ground.

Zibu cut Breskaro’s pack free and took off.

Esha’s slingshot bullet struck a toad warrior in the face, knocking him out. As she slipped her hand into the pouch containing her lead bullets, she noticed Breskaro pinned and saw the guides sprinting away.

“Master!” Esha screamed.

Dozens of toad warriors barreled into Firrus and Perolo. Esha dropped behind the two Rrakans and loaded a bullet. 

“Esha,” Breskaro groaned. “The pack!”

Esha whirled her sling and released. The bullet thunked into Zibu’s arm, shattering bone. He fell and cried out but Kriba helped him up and they kept running.

Breskaro pressed against the earth and pried himself up. He stood with the sword still lodged in his body. The
spell of compulsory obedience
rushed from his lips and the viridian in his eyes sputtered. 

“Return now!” he yelled to the guides.

Kriba and Zibu paused, but then the spell broke. Esha’s sling hummed as the guides darted into the cover of the trees and marsh. Her bullet missed and a batrakosian tackled her.

Breskaro staggered back and wrenched the blade free from his body. None of the batrakosians had reached him yet. They seemed afraid of attacking him. Esha drew her dagger and backed up to the Rrakans. She began swinging wildly at the others coming at her. 

Breskaro raced after the thieving guides. That pack held the part to fix Harmulkot’s device. Without it Orisala was doomed, and all of this had been for nothing. 

As he reached the trees, Esha screamed in pain. He instinctively glanced back. The girl rolled across the ground, narrowly avoiding a frog-man’s blade, and flopped painfully against a stone fragment. She stirred weakly, but a trail of blood marked her path across the stone.

For a brief moment his eyes met Esha’s.

Damn.

Breskaro rushed back toward Esha. He plowed into the batrakosians, swinging his sword, severing limbs, blinding eyes, spilling intestines. Perolo fell, clubbed on the head. A minute later Firrus went down as well. Esha disappeared.

For every toad warrior Breskaro killed, two more took its place. His limbs grew tired. The green flame left his eyes. Beneath the mask, his face grew taught with agony from a score of small wounds and the gaping hole left in him from Zibu’s sword. 

At last the batrakosians overwhelmed him and drug him to the ground. A club pounded against his skull until unconsciousness took him.

~~~

Breskaro groaned and sat up. He was inside the ruins of the temple complex. The batrakosians had dumped him and the two Rrakans in the back of a building where three walls yet stood. Eight toads armed with spears stood guard at the open end. 

Breskaro’s hands were tied behind his back. Blood-spattered, bruised, and bearing a score of small cuts, Perolo and Firrus were sitting up nearby. There was no sign of Esha.

“Where’s the girl?”

Perolo shook his head. “Lost sight of her.”

“As the damn toads took me down,” Firrus said, “I saw her duck under one and crawl between his legs. That’s the last I saw of her. Maybe she escaped.”

Perolo flexed at his bonds.

“Don’t waste your strength,” Breskaro said. “I can take care of that when we’re ready.”

“You sure you’re all right, master? You don’t look so good. The hole in your stomach hasn’t sealed yet.”

“It hurts like hell, but I can feel it healing.” As long as no one ripped out his heart, tore off his head, or ripped him to pieces, he figured he’d be fine eventually. And if they did, he guessed he’d find out what being a wraith was like.

“What do we do now?” Firrus asked.

“I can loosen our bonds, like I did when you were crucified. Then we can make a run for it. Problem is getting past all of them. Best thing to do is wait and see what they plan on doing with us. See if an opportunity arises.”

~~~

After hustling through the swamp for four hours, Kriba slumped down against a tree and dropped the stolen pack in his lap. 

Zibu collapsed beside him, his left arm hanging limp.

“How much we got in there?”

Kriba rifled through Breskaro’s pack. “More gold than I ever thought I’d see.” He pulled out a dozen coin-filled pouches marked with the cross symbol of the Temple of Saint Resban. 

“This book of deviltry.” He tossed the grimoire aside. “And … this thing.” He lifted out the part for the Akythiri mechanism and slung it out into the marsh.

“Good plan of yours, dumping the demon on the toads.”

“They deserve each other. And now we’re rich!”

“Yeah, we just gotta—” Zibu cocked his head. “Do you hear something?”

Both men fell silent and looked around. They were on a dry path that threaded between a thick stand of marsh trees. 

“Don’t see nothing,” Kriba whispered. “But we should get moving. Don’t want to stay out here too long with the toads stirred up.”

A whizzing noise like a giant mosquito silenced the birds of the marsh. A lead bullet shattered Zibu’s left temple and lodged in his brain.

Kriba grabbed the pack and ran. He made it a dozen steps before a second sling bullet struck him in the base of his skull.

Chapter 20

Midnight. A full Avida hung high above, casting the ruins in an eery light. Charcoal Zhura was at waning gibbous, hovering near Avida. A batrakosian shaman barged into the building where Breskaro and the others were imprisoned. He was flanked by two enormous warriors armed with solid iron bars over six feet in length. Breskaro stared at him calmly. Firrus and Perolo were startled awake.

The shaman was shriveled with slate-colored scales rather than the green of the others. One of his eyes was white. On his head he wore the skull of a giant bird. Feathers stuck out from the base of the helmet and fanned out to form the cloak he wore on his back. The shaman began to chant as he approached Breskaro.

He stopped a few feet away, holding his hands out. His good eye widened and he made a gurgling croak. He inched toward Breskaro, reached out, and yanked the death mask from Breskaro’s face, breaking the leather cords that held it in place.

The shaman yelped, dropped the mask, and backed away with his bodyguards. The other guards further back cried out in fear. One of them ran away. The shaman said something to one of his bodyguards, but the guard shook his head. Several minutes of arguing followed. Finally, the bodyguard went to Breskaro. 

He removed Breskaro’s breastplate and shirt, exposing the half-dead flesh, the partly healed wound in his stomach, and the gaping, unsealed wound wherein pulsed his qavra heart. Another guard croaked and ran in fear.

The shaman edged closer, reaching out toward the heart wound. Breskaro scooted away. The shaman kept coming. Breskaro struck the wall and could go no further. He tried a new tactic. He smiled at the shaman and flicked his tongue across his teeth. The green flame within his eyes blazed bright as he summoned his anger. The shaman snapped his hand back, as if it had touched flame.

The shaman spoke to Breskaro, Firrus, and Perolo in sharp, hissing tones they could not understand. Then he pointed at Breskaro and spoke angrily. Breskaro met his stare with his own intense gaze.

The shaman hurried away, leaving the two big bodyguards behind.

“Wonder what that was about,” Perolo said.

“Not sure,” Breskaro replied, “but I don’t think he approves of me.”

“Should we make our move?” Firrus asked.

“Not yet. Too many warriors out there, and I don’t feel like my strength has returned yet. Let’s see what they’re up to. They could have killed us to start with if they had wanted to.”

The shaman returned an hour later. He took out a square of cloth and dipped a finger into a small pouch that hung from his waist. His finger had a sticky substance on it which he used to draw a rune on the cloth. He went to Breskaro and placed the cloth over his mouth, fixing it in place with a rope gag. Breskaro didn’t fight it. 

A group of batrakosians carried in a wicker cage suspended from a set of long poles. They lowered the cage to the ground and forced Breskaro and the two Rrakans to climb in. The shaman shouted orders. Dozens of toad warriors appeared carrying torches. With the way before them illuminated, the entire party delved deeper into Peithoom Swamp.

The procession of fifty batrakosian warriors led by their shaman marched through the dark and early morning, through densely forested sections of the swamp. At midday they came to a vast lake. Rafts waited on the shore. They placed the cage holding Breskaro and the Rrakans on a large raft. The shaman’s personal bodyguards poled the vessel. 

An hour later they disembarked on a barren island littered with crumbling marble blocks and columns and sunken pavers. Just over the horizon, leagues away, loomed a volcano, rumbling and fiery, spewing a wispy plume.