The Crystal Mountain (11 page)

But didn’t you yourself try to teach her that the essence of goodness was to trust, even when it put you in danger of grief? he asked himself. Can you practice what you preach, Tauran?

He honestly wasn’t sure.

“Where’s Micus?” Tauran asked.

“I don’t know,” Kael admitted. “I haven’t seen him.”

“He became cursed,” Zasian said from across the room. His voice, so shaky and filled with fright, belied every sense Tauran had of him as a dangerous, cunning foe.

“What?” Tauran asked quietly, suspicious of the priest’s motives. “What do you mean?”

“He and the dragon creature were fused,” Zasian said, sounding uncertain. “A terrible thing. He was mad, filled with unreason.”

Tauran leaned forward and spoke his next words very carefully. “How do you know?”

Zasian began to explain everything that had happened to them, to all of them, since he had awakened. He told his tale in a simple, straightforward way, detailing events as a child might. From time to time, Tauran or Kael would prompt him about some piece of information or another. Always, the priest expounded on his story to the best of his ability.

Through it all, Tauran listened with half an ear toward catching Zasian in a lie or sly trick. He expected the priest to slip up at some point, reveal that he was, in fact, still the dangerous enemy Tauran knew him to be.

When Zasian finished recounting what he had witnessed since awakening—a point before which he could remember absolutely nothing—Tauran felt tears running down his cheeks.

“The planes have shattered,” he mumbled, letting the despair overwhelm him. “We are all lost.”

Can you conjure some impressive magic, if need be?” Kaanyr asked in hushed tones. “Something fancy that will intimidate these fools?”

He and Aliisza stood near the entrance to a large cavern, waiting for a chance to talk to the powerful demon who controlled the forces with whom they had become entangled. Hot, wet fumes wafted through the natural chamber, disgorged from fumaroles scattered across the uneven rock floor. A channel of glowing, viscous lava tumbled from a hole near the ceiling along one side and vanished again through a sloping, narrowing crevice a few paces away. In the darkest recesses at the edges of the chamber, fungi and mosses sprouted from damp rock, fed by both the heat and the minerals seeping from the stone. Some gleamed with their own innate light.

A huge marilith remained on the far side of the chamber, towering over her servants. She swayed as she moved, half woman and half snake, her back turned to her guests. Her six arms, constantly in motion as she worked at something Aliisza could not see, seemed to perform a bizarre, synchronized

dance. The hyena-headed demon with whom Aliisza and Kaanyr had first negotiated stood at her side, waiting for her to acknowledge him.

Aliisza considered Kaanyr’s request for flashy magic. “Maybe,” she said, “but I’m still not certain this is the best idea. You are risking Kael and Tauran’s lives with this gambit, and we are not negotiating from a strong position.” Not to mention the fact that I might pass out from the strain of it, she thought. How quickly you forget to be worried for me, lover.

“Leave that to me,” he said. There was a smugness to his tone that made her uneasy.

Aliisza wanted to roll her eyes, but she kept her features neutral.

Her thoughts instead strayed back to a time that seemed lost in the mists. She remembered when Kaanyr had come to power within Hellgate Keep. He had engineered his ascension by playing the trio of mariliths in command, one of which was his mother, against one another. It had been a grand day for him, and for Aliisza at his side, as he took control of the demonic armies imprisoned within the labyrinthine tunnels beneath the ancient tower. Kaanyr eventually led that collection of fiends to freedom, and they formed the basis of his army, the Scourged Legion, when he later occupied dwarven Amarindar.

But that had been lifetimes ago, Aliisza thought. Then another thought struck her, and she grimaced. Did I bring this on? she wondered. Is this my fault? Did our reminiscing in the rotunda trigger some of Kaanyr’s old urges? Aliisza felt consternation mingle with guilt. He is his old self again. He thinks he can outwit another marilith, just because she reminds him of his mother. His dealings with the Triumvirate

all those years ago have made him cocky and too certain of his own success now.

But he doesn’t have other demons to turn against her this time.

Kaanyr nudged her, drawing her out of her thoughts.

The marilith had finally given her subordinate her attention. The creature spoke quietly to her and pointed at Aliisza and Kaanyr. The massive she-demon turned to face the pair, and Aliisza could see an expression of mild curiosity, mixed with wary concern, grow on the fiend’s face. With a gesture and a word the marilith dismissed the hyena demon, who grimaced as he departed the cavern through another tunnel.

The marilith turned and glided across the stone floor, her snake body rippling behind her.

Aliisza sized up the creature. The demon’s torso was slightly larger than her own. If she had been a human woman, most men would have considered her thick-boned and ugly. Her face was unusually round, with puffy cheeks and lips and a slightly crooked nose, possibly broken once or twice. She had pulled her hair, a dull gray-brown in color, into half a dozen braids that hung limply down the sides and back of her head. She wore a cuirass of hammered bronze, and a set of matching broad-bladed scimitars dangled in their sheaths on a belt draped low across her hips.

“I am Vhissilka. Who are you?” the marilith demanded.

Aliisza craned her head back in surprise. Not the usual tack I would have expected, she thought.

Kaanyr bowed slightly. “I am Kaanyr Vhok, the Sceptered One, ruler of the Scourged Legion and son of Mulvassyss. This is my consort and lieutenant, Aliisza. Thank you for granting us an audience.”

The marilith continued to look at them with suspicion. “What do you want?”

Kaanyr grimaced and said, “In truth, we want nothing from you, other than safe passage from this place so that we may travel on to our own destination.”

The demon stared at Kaanyr, her eyes narrowing. “Grekzith says you consort with angels,” she said.

“Ah, not true,” Kaanyr said, “though we do have one as a prisoner. We are taking him to visit others who would be most interested in what he knows about his homeland.”

Vhissilka brought one of her six hands up to her chin and stroked it. “I think not,” she said. “Give me the angel and you can leave. I will take him to others who will want to hear his information.”

Kaanyr shook his head. “No, no,” he said jovially, but Aliisza could see that his eyes glittered with subtle anger. “That would not work at all. You see, the angel trusts me. He believes I have his best interests at heart.”

Aliisza glanced over at Kaanyr in alarm. How much truth is he going to weave into his lies? she wondered.

How much is he lying?

Kaanyr continued. “Should you take him from me, he will never divulge what he knows. This is a very delicate matter.”

The marilith hissed. “I am not a fool, cambion. Whatever you think you can extract from the angel, I can squeeze from him, too. You are not so important that I cannot just kill you and keep the angel for myself.” Vhissilka pulled several scimitars free and twirled them casually.

Aliisza’s heart thumped madly in her chest. This isn’t going well, and Kaanyr knows it. She considered a bit of magic and prepared to conjure it.

“You can certainly try,” Kaanyr replied, stepping back and placing a hand on the pommel of his own blade, which glowed purple with its magic, “but we are not foes to be taken lightly. I can promise you that you will die before your lackeys can reach us to finish us off.”

The demon swayed back and forth, and she twirled her scimitars more rapidly as she considered the threat. Aliisza took a few steps to the side, not wanting to give Vhissilka two targets right next to one another. She had just about decided to create a magical portal and dash through it back to the cave where Tauran and Kael waited when Kaanyr spoke again.

“What do you lose by honoring our request? How does it harm your own goals to grant us safe passage from here?”

The marilith spun away and slithered across the room as though dismissing the two visitors. The scimitars she had brandished before had been returned to their sheaths. “I cannot help you,” she called over her shoulder. “You must find your own way.”

Aliisza chuckled once, softly to herself. Called her bluff, she thought, looking at Kaanyr.

Kaanyr was frowning. He followed the demon. “Abandoning us to our fate in this hostile place is little better than turning on us,” he said. “It is in your best interests to ensure that we are well beyond the Blood Rift before you send us on our way.”

Aliisza groaned inwardly. Kaanyr, no! She gave us our freedom to leave. Let’s just do it!

Vhissilka laughed, and the shrill, screeching sound made Aliisza cringe. “The Blood Rift!” the marilith chortled. “Is that what you think this place is? Then you are a bigger fool than I thought.”

Kaanyr stopped in his tracks. “What do you mean?”

The demon turned and swayed as she glided back toward them. “This wretched chunk of rock is no longer part of anything! I commanded a horde of demons ten thousand strong. I led them in wave after glorious wave against our devilish foes, driving the hated enemy before us, securing my status in the annals of time. Victory was to be mine!”

Aliisza, her hands trembling at the vehement explanation she was hearing, stepped up next to Kaanyr. “What happened?”

The marilith shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “But this wretched chunk of rock got ripped away from the Blood Rift. One moment we were driving the hated devils before us, and the next, I and my personal honor guard, along with the foes we were destroying, went spiraling away as the sky shook and turned a million colors.”

“So you’re just as lost as we are,” Kaanyr said to himself, so softly that only Aliisza could hear him. Then, louder, he said, “You seek the means to return to your glorious battle, and we seek passage to the halls of the great demons who commanded you. I think I see a perfect union in the making.”

“Your clever words and double meanings bore me, cambion.” Vhissilka spat, slithering around him. The scimitars were back in her hands. She let her tail curl just a bit at his feet as she circled. “I will rend you to pieces soon, whether it costs me my life or not. Speak plain!”

Kaanyr spun in place, facing her squarely. “Our problems have a single solution,” he said. His hand twitched over the hilt of his sword, but he did not draw it. “We both need to get someplace else. Why not work together?”

“How can you help me?” the marilith asked, a look of

doubt filling her fiery red eyes. “You don’t know where you are, either. And you said before that your destination lies elsewhere. You do not desire to visit the Blood Rift.”

“Yes, but you do,” Kaanyr said, spreading his hands wide in a gesture of supplication, “and we have ways of finding a path back. We will aid you as we aid ourselves. In exchange for protection until we get where we need to go, of course.”

“You did not answer me. How can you guide us?”

Kaanyr opened his mouth to speak, but the marilith held up her hand, gesturing for silence. The cambion snapped his mouth shut, and Aliisza could see the frustration and impatience in his mien. Vhissilka cocked her head to one side, as though listening. She held that pose.

Aliisza was just on the verge of reaching out to Kaanyr to urge him to give up the dangerous negotiation when Vhissilka spun away and said, “No more discussion on this now.” She glided rapidly toward the far end of the chamber. “Right now, we must fight.”

“Why?” Aliisza asked. “What’s wrong?”

“The devils,” the marilith replied. “They have found our caves and are invading.”

“Invading?” Kaanyr asked, sounding doubtful. “In what strength?”

“Kaanyr,” Aliisza said under her breath, “This is our chance. Let’s get out of here now, while we still can!” She took the cambion’s hand in her own and gave it a squeeze. “Please?”

Kaanyr disentangled his fingers from hers. “No,” he said. “This is the best opportunity we have. If we leave, where will we go? Back to the beach? Over to the devils’ camp? Don’t be so timid, Aliisza; We stay.”

More demons arrived while the two half-fiends argued, and the chamber began to fill up. The demons crowded in and pushed toward the front, where the marilith had taken her place. The chamber filled with nervous excitement as the host of creatures grew in size. The denizens chattered and snarled at one another as they strained to get close. A pair of fiery red insectlike demons near Aliisza and Vhok got into a squabble, pushing and shoving, before a much larger fiend with extremely broad, fur-covered shoulders and the face of a great hunting cat lashed out at the two with a spiked club. One of the insect-demons sank to the floor, its carapace cracked and fluid leaking from it. The other, cowed, scrambled away to another part of the room.

Aliisza followed Kaanyr as he headed toward a shelf of rock near the back of the chamber. He scrambled up to it and then reached back to offer her a hand. She joined him. From there, they could see over the throng to where the marilith slithered back and forth, as though pacing.

From somewhere along one side of the gathering, the sound of war drums boomed. A rhythmic cadence reverberated through the chamber, slow at first but growing more rapid. The demons chanted and howled in time with the drumming, and many began a strange, frenzied dance, thrashing back and forth and pounding the hilts of their weapons against the stone floor of the cavern. The energy level built. Aliisza pressed herself back against the wall. The whole chamber seemed to strain to contain the savage eagerness of the crowd. They were ready to burst in fury, to kill, destroy. Only Vhissilka’s fierce stare, raking across the crowd, held them entranced.

“Go!” the marilith at last screamed at her underlings. “Kill everything that stinks of the Hells!”