Obsidian Ridge (19 page)

Lowering its body close to the floor, it seemed to strain its muscles, as if laboring with something difficult. The pillars it held between two powerful tentacles cracked under the pressure, sending stone and dust tinkling to the floor. With one final push, the creature opened its backside and deposited a huge, silvery-white sack on the ground. Then the beast retreated, gripping the pillars with its tentacles and pulling itself through the room.

Ooze dripped from the side of the sack, and it began to move. Something inside poked at its edges, making strange shapes in the stretchy, elastic sides of its cocoon. Then a hole appeared, and a pair of long thin tendrils slipped out, forcing the opening to widen. Two more tendrils, then four more after that, groped their way out as the sack was turned inside out and a large spider appeared.

Maybe half as big as the smashed vermin whose guts were now caked on the flagstones of the chamber, this new spider had silvery legs that ended in bladed tips—natural swords attached to each of its eight spindly legs.

Evelyne dashed past him, grabbing his shoulder. “This way!”

Rolling back to his feet, the Claw followed. He didn’t need to be told twice.

Evelyne led him deeper into the room, hugging the wall. The tentacled creature was on the other side of the chamber. The Claw could see it through the pillars as they ran. Its body opened to deposit a second silvery sack on the ground.

Behind them, the spider’s legs tapped out a rhythm of sharp clicking sounds as they scampered across the floor. Evelyne dashed ahead at full bore, her arms pumping. She was quick, so was the Claw, but the spider with its eight legs was faster, and it gained ground.

They reached the corner of the room, the spider bearing down on them. It was dark here, darker than the rest of the room. Even the purple glow from the ceiling didn’t reach into the recesses of this chamber. Evelyne gave a quick look over her shoulder, then dived head first into the darkness.

The Claw was startled. What sort of magic was this? She’d led him into the farthest corner and disappeared, trapping him behind a spider and a spider-making monster. Slowing his pace, he steeled himself for a tough fight.

If he ever found this Evelyne again, she was going to be very sorry she—

“Don’t stop! Just jump.” Evelyne’s voice came out of the darkness, coaxing him on. It sounded hollow, almost echoed, as if she were inside a well. “Hurry!”

The spider was nearly on him. It ran with six legs, swiping its front two out trying to corral him. Not having much choice, the Claw leaped into the dark corner, the spider’s limbs nearly on his back.

Flying through the air, he braced for impact, half expecting that he’d knock himself cold running full speed into a brick wall. But instead, he slipped right through. A large chunk of the wall was missing here in the corner. The absent piece was broken in such a way that it was covered perfectly by the shadows.

Jumping from the solid stone into dark nothingness was tremendously disorienting, and the Claw opened his palm, trying to see where he was before he impaled himself on a piece of stone—or worse, another spider.

He fell for a moment longer, then his magical light revealed the dirt floor. It came up fast, and he crashed to the ground with a tremendous thud.

“Not very sturdy there, are you?” said Evelyne, helping him to his feet.

“You might not think that,” he replied.

“That wasn’t bad fighting back there,” she said, with a wink. “Maybe I won’t kill you just yet.”

“Thanks,” said the Claw. “I appreciate that.”

They were inside what amounted to a large hole in the brick wall. The floor was big enough for four or five men to stand around comfortably without bumping into each other much. The crack they had jumped through was up high in the wall, maybe twice his height from the floor. He could just make out the faintest bit of purple glow, rimming the broken stone above him.

As he looked on, the spider’s legs shot through the opening, probing the air and the stone.

“Are we trapped in here?” asked the Claw.

“No. There’s a passage,” she replied, taking him by the arm. “It’s small, and we’ll have to crawl, but it’ll lead us out of here.”

“What about the spider? Holes in walls seem like the last place we want to fight one of those things.”

“It won’t leave that room. It’s bound to the deepspawn that created it.”

The Claw looked up at the spider. So far it wasn’t making any real attempt to follow them, only waiting at the opening.

“So that thing’s called a deepspawn?” he asked.

“No,” replied Evelyne, dragging him toward the crawl-space. “It’s called Clusterfang.”

“A deepspawn with a name.” He was shoved toward an opening in the wall, down near the floor. “I can’t wait to hear this story.” Dropping to his knees, he held his palm out and followed the light into the darkness.

Everything shook. Only slightly, but it shook all the same. The walls hummed with power. The floor swayed like the deck of a ship on a gentle sea. The chandeliers, “decorative reminders of a time long past, swayed gently, constantly.

Resting his bone-thin arm on the chiseled obsidian throne, Arch Magus Xeries twirled the stem of his wine goblet between his fingers. He watched the red liquid inside swirl. Its surface trembled, never smooth, shifting like everything else.

On the dais in front of him, an image fluttered—Erlkazar, the plains of Llorbauth. His pets gathered below, waiting. And they would continue to wait, just as he would.

He had not been patient as a younger man. He had, in fact, hated waiting for anything. In truth, he didn’t much like it now. But as an immortal, waiting had become a simple fact of life.

He had grown better at it, through practice. He had had a lot of practice waiting, though he wasn’t as rash and reactive as he had been long ago. There was a limit to all of his learned patience.

Xeries was approaching that limit now.

“Do you remember our first ride through the countryside here?” he asked, not taking his eyes off of his wine.

“I’ve… never been here before,” replied a weak, shaky woman’s voice.

Xeries turned his attention to his left, where his wife, his queen, sat. Their thrones were carved from the same piece of obsidian, chiseled from the same huge piece of stone as the floor itself. They were attached to each other and to the floor. And when Xeries and his queen sat in their thrones, they could feel the vibrations of the entire citadel, amplified above all other places.

“I know you haven’t,” he said to his wife, his voice echoing as it always did. “I wasn’t speaking to you.”

“Oh,” she said. She wore a long, black veil that covered her face and shoulders. When seated, its hem collected in her lap.

“This was my home, long ago,” he said, looking down on the image at his feet. “Well, a piece of it anyway. As a young man.”

“Is that why we are here?” she asked. She wheezed a little as she spoke these words.

“In part,” he said. “I need something they have. Something to help me.”

His wife’s voice grew cold. “Something to maintain your immortality, you mean.”

Xeries “stood, his knees popping and creaking as he did. He shuffled down from the dais. His body was bent from age, and he sported the wicked marks and deformations of a man who had dabbled with powers well beyond his control.

“Have you not lived a good life?” he asked. “Have you not been given everything your heart desires?”

“You have shown me places and given me baubles,” she replied. “But you have taken more than your fair share in return.”

“I have loved you more than I have loved any of my other wives. Does that not please you?”

“That is not true.” She spoke these words so forcefully that it caused her to cough. She struggled for air with long, gasping breaths. When her lungs were clear, she continued. “What you call love is merely a memory. The memory of your

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first wife. I have been little more than a replacement. And not even that. I have been a means to an end for you.”

Xeries picked up a glass bottle and filled his goblet fuller. He had servants who would do this for him, but there was something enjoyable about pouring his own wine—something left over from the days when his first wife was alive.

“Then why did you marry me?” he asked, not looking at her.

“You seduced me with your promises of riches and power.”

“Did I not deliver?” “Does it matter?”

Xeries thought for a moment. “No. I suppose it doesn’t.”

He gazed at the highly polished obsidian floor. He did not think of himself as the bent-over wizard who looked back at him from the reflection. His thin, pale skin, wrinkled and baggy, hung from his narrow frame. His cheeks stuck out at odd angles, and disfigured lumps protruded from his chin, forehead and ears—the leftover remnants of the day things all went wrong.

There were bits and pieces of Xeries in this man. But it was not really him.

The man looking back from the floor was something Xeries had become. Something he had transformed into, not entirely on accident. His mind wandered back to that day, so many hundreds of years ago….

++++ ?

Xeries could see her face as clear as if she had been with him yesterday. She was so beautiful. Golden brown hair, almost blond but more like the color of spun honey. Intelligent and kind, wise and patient, she was everything he had ever hoped for.

They married young. He, the fourth son in line for the throne of Tethyr. She, the eldest daughter of a rich and

powerful baron. They made magic together, both literally and figuratively.

It was here, the kingdom now known as Erlkazar, where they had first concocted their plans. Back then, it was called Elestam, and it was little more than annexed wilderness on the outskirts of Tethyr. Xeries’s father, King Strohm II, had only just made this overgrown patch of land an official part of the kingdom within the last year.

Xeries and his wife had been married since before the annexation. They had ventured out for a long ride, exploring the newest piece of what could one day be part of their lands.

“Do you wish you were in line to become king?” his wife had asked him.

“I am in line to be king,” he had replied.

They rode side by side, their horses picking their way through the pass at the top of the Cloven Mountains. An entire unit of King Strohm’s army accompanied them.

“Yes,” she said, “but you’re the fourth son. Your oldest brother will become king, and his son will inherit the throne.”

Xeries nodded. “That is how it usually works, yes. But that doesn’t mean I’m not in line for the throne. If for some reason my three4rothers and father are no longer fit to rule, then I shall become king.”

“And I would be your queen,” said his wife, a wide smile on her face.

He smiled back. “Yes, Shylby, you would be my queen.”

Shylby cocked her head. They had only been married a few years, not a long time by most people’s standards, but he knew well what that look meant. “You have an idea,” he said.

She nodded, her smile turning a little more devious. “If we were to live longer than anyone else in the family, we would be the rightful heirs to the throne.”

Xeries spun around, looking to see if any of the soldiers could hear them talking.

“Shh!” he said. “Someone may hear you. These soldiers all work for my father.”

Shylby laughed. “You don’t think I’m plotting to kill your family, do you?”

That was exactly what he had been thinking.

She shook her head. “No. I said we had to outlive them, not kill them.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“I have heard of a spell that can be cast upon two lovers,” she said, leaning over in her saddle to place her head upon his shoulder. “If their love is pure, they live on forever, together in each other’s embrace. Then we could be together forever and always.”

“And we would live long enough to inherit the throne,” said Xeries, finally understanding. “No matter how long it took.”

“Precisely,” said Shylby. “And then all of this”—she waved her arm out, taking in the entire valley below the Cloven Mountains all the way to the Deepwash—”shall be ours to rule. Together.”

++++

It was nearly two years later before they had everything they needed to begin their spell. Their lives had been consumed by research and the procuring of rare magical components. But they had spent that time together, and they had only grown closer.

“The very last part of the ritual requires absolute concentration,” Shylby said. “The words have to be spoken in unison.”

Xeries nodded. “I know.”

“If either of us misses a beat, the spell will backfire.”

Xeries took a breath. “Are you sure you’re ready to do this?” he asked as the two of them laid out all the things they were going to need for their daylong ritual.

“Of course I am.”

Shylby smiled. To Xeries, Shylby’s smile was the most

intoxicating thing in the world. It calmed him. It warmed him. And it wiped away any doubt he had. “Are you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, feeling tremendously lucky to have met and married such a wonderful woman. “I’m ready.”

Taking their candles, they lit the censers and began the ritual. Since they needed an entire uninterrupted day to cast their spell, they had chosen a remore barn on the outskirts of Shylby’s father’s land. No one would find or bother them there, almost a full day’s ride from the baron’s keep. It was the perfect place.

Ground herbs and botanical oils were poured into the flame, one at a time, each in its proper order and accompanied by the correct words. They had rehearsed, over and over, the many different verses of the spell. Oftentimes reciting them like poetry to each other, as if the archaic sounds from this long unspoken magical language were sweet nothings.

The day passed, and finally they were ready to speak the last few words of the spell that would bind their souls, their spirits, and their life-forces together—bringing them immortality. Xeries and Shylby stood over a large stone altar in the middle of the room. It was filled with water, and they looked down at the reflections of themselves.