The Heart of the Sands, Book 3 of The Gods Within (28 page)

“As you will,” she said, a
knowing smile on her face. They both knew he was wise to her tactics. She asked,
“What have you been up to this past year, besides bedding the
Balenda?”

News of that sort traveled fast in the castle; she had
quite a number of informants tasked with reporting even the most trivial
details to her, probably even had someone in SavinCourt that reported to her
some time ago. But he was up to the game, so he said, “Mostly just
bedding the Balenda.”

She threw her head back and laughed, then said, “Come
now, you must have something to tell me.”

He gave her a brief and highly edited summary of his
travels with Morgin, and his drifting about with Cort after they’d
been separated. He finished, saying, “He’s dead now,
and you seem to care little about that.”

She shrugged, poured herself a small goblet of water. “He
became more a liability than an asset, and I have other things to worry about.”

“Like the border situation with Penda?”

“Ah, you’ve heard rumors.”

He crossed the room to a window overlooking the inner
bailey, stared down at the courtyard below. “More than rumors, I’ve
heard a few unsettling details.”

“Like my nomination of Brandon as warmaster
of all the Lesser Clans?”

“Aye, and it sounds like you knew exactly how
volatile that would make the situation.”

She took a delicate sip of water and said, “Someone
has to keep BlakeDown in his place.”

“But why provoke him so? I know you’re
not the foolish, old woman some believe.”

“Well I thank you for recognizing that, even
if others don’t.”

They sparred back and forth like that for quite some time.
Unlike other members of the family, such evasive tactics did not frustrate him.
He’d grown up dealing with her like this, knew she enjoyed the
competitive interplay of their words, and if one were careful, and willing to
put in the time, she did yield up bits and pieces of information. But one had
to take the time to put those bits and pieces together carefully. Tulellcoe
would later recall every word, and meticulously replay them in an effort to do
so.

She dismissed him with some excuse about needing to speak
with one of her stewards. But when he opened the door to her chamber to leave,
NickoLot stood in the hallway, and she stepped hurriedly in his way to block
his path, a tiny thing dressed in black as if in mourning. “Uncle,”
she said, and the strength of her voice surprised him.

Standing in the doorway still holding it open, he greeted
her, “Nicki!”

She looked him up and down carefully, the kind of look
Olivia might use to intimidate, but on Nicki’s face it was really
just a cold, piercing appraisal. “Rhianne isn’t dead,”
she said. “I know it. And neither is Morgin. He can’t
be.”

“Oh really!” Olivia said,
sarcasm punctuating every word. “With all your powers, child,
where is your proof that they live?”

NickoLot opened her mouth to say something, but hesitated
fearfully.

“Exactly,” Olivia said. “I
tire of this little fantasy you’re perpetrating. Leave us, and
take your childish games elsewhere.”

NickoLot lowered her eyes, turned and walked away in
silence.

Tulellcoe frowned and looked at Olivia. The old woman
said, “She refuses to accept reality. It’s not
healthy.”

He stepped into the hallway and closed the door quietly,
his thoughts roiling in turmoil.

~~~

Morgin now recognized the trail clearly as Mortiss carefully picked her way up a twisting
track of steep switchbacks. They’d climbed above the tree line
that morning, and at this altitude the vegetation was limited to lichen and
mosses. Trees and scrub no longer masked the trail with their ever changing
growth and regrowth, and near mid-morning he’d passed the last of
his memorized features.

Mortiss gave a last
burst of effort and climbed up onto a flat shelf of rock, a wide expanse where
long ago Ellowyn and the other legion commanders had awaited Morddon in a
solemn, silent throng. With them had waited the royalty of the House of the
Thane and what remained of the Benesh’ere command. Morgin nudged
Mortiss forward slowly to the center of the shelf and dismounted.

The black slash of the
crypt’s entrance remained as he remembered it, filled with rocks
and small boulders piled there by the angels, and obscured by the shadows
Morgin had cast. He marveled that after all these centuries his shadowmagic
still remained strong and undiminished.

He let Mortiss wander
off to graze; perhaps she would find some of the lichen to her liking. He laid
his sword to one side, leaned it carefully against a boulder well out of the
way, then set to work removing the stones from the cave’s
entrance.

~~~

Salula stopped at the bottom of a steep rise, up which
the trail led in a series of sharp switchbacks. He climbed out of the saddle
and tied his horse’s reins to a scraggly bush that had managed to
send out a few dried and withered shoots among the rocks. With the command in
place to keep one hand on the saddle horn, Rhianne was forced to remain
mounted. Salula finished with his horse and approached her, stopped beside her
horse and said, “You may take your hands off the saddle horn and
dismount.”

Not a compelling command, but she obeyed nevertheless.

Using a piece of rope he tied one end around her left
wrist, leaving a tether about the length of a man’s arm. He leaned
toward her, lowered his voice and whispered in her ear. “I’m
leaving your hands free so you can climb. You will follow me. You will say
nothing. You will make no noise and utter no sound. You will move only as far
as required by my pull on this tether. If I release it, you’ll
stay in place.”

Salula drew his sword, and she saw it for the first time,
a black shadow of obsidian gloom. She sensed the magic in the blade, some sort
of spell-crafting she did not understand.

They started up the switchbacks on foot, Salula leading,
she following at the end of her tether. It was an arduous climb in muddy skirts
that kept twisting about her ankles, made even harder since she could make no
sound, could not utter a grunt or a moan on a particularly difficult stretch of
trail. She marveled that Salula moved with absolutely no sound, climbing up the
switchbacks in a silence truly unnatural and inhuman.

As they neared the crest of the trail she heard someone
above them occasionally grunting with effort. She heard the dull clap of stone
against stone. From below it appeared the trail opened out onto some sort of
shelf in the side of the mountain.

Salula hesitated about the height of a man from the top of
the trail, turned back to her and whispered in her ear, “You can
wait here.” He didn’t realize it, but with that
non-compulsive statement, he’d broken all of the compulsions he’d
laid upon her.

He left her there and climbed slowly, silently to the top
of the trail, paused there and peered over its lip. Then he moved forward with
that deadly silence only a Kull could affect, and when he stepped onto the
shelf above, he disappeared from sight.

Rhianne scrambled upward, trying to do so silently,
knowing she could not abandon the poor fellow who now possessed that blade. She
managed not to stumble or fall, like some witless maiden, reached the top of
the trail and looked over the lip of the shelf. Salula stood no more than an
arm’s length from her, crouched, creeping forward silently. At the
far end of the shelf a man stooped over a heavy stone, his back to Salula,
grunting as he tried to lift the block of granite.

Off to one side she spotted the sword, and that was the
oddest thing, for this close her sense of direction to the blade and its power
had grown quite acute; and that sense pointed not at the steel sword lying to
one side, but at the man grunting with effort to lift the stone.

The man finally lifted the stone with a great effort, and
staggering under its weight, he backed out of a strange crease in the rock. He
dropped the stone onto a pile to one side of the shadowy crease, then glanced
their way, and at the sight of his face, she froze in disbelief.

Looking at Salula, Morgin’s eyes gladdened
with joy as he straightened. He said, “France! My old friend, I
thought you dead and gone.”

Morgin opened his arms and walked toward Salula to embrace
him. Rhianne climbed desperately up onto the shelf. Her ankles tangled in her
muddy skirt as she stumbled toward Salula screaming, “Nooooo! It’s
Salula.”

Morgin froze with his eyes wide just as she hit Salula
from behind, wrapping her arms around his waist. She let her knees buckle and
tried to pull him down or hinder him with her weight, but he snarled, “Let
me go,” and her arms opened as the compulsion overcame her. He
swung his fist around behind him, and slammed the hilt of his sword into the
side of her head.

Chapter 21: The Crypt of the Sunset King

Morgin staggered to a stop when Rhianne scrambled onto
the shelf of rock and screamed, “Nooooo! It’s Salula.”

Rhianne! His Rhianne! Alive! Not dead! Filthy and
bedraggled, her hair clumped and matted with dirt, wearing a common, homespun
dress of course fabric caked with mud. His Rhianne! But as she charged France
her words hit him.

Salula! No, it couldn’t be. Salula was dead. But
then as Rhianne wrapped her arms around France, his friend growled, “Let
me go,” and his words came out in Salula’s voice, the
harsh rumbling tones of the halfman Morgin would never forget.

Salula batted Rhianne in the side of the head, and she
crumbled to the ground like a rag doll. Then Salula turned to face Morgin, and
he realized that nothing of his old friend the swordsman remained in that face.

“Well, Elhiyne,” Salula growled.
“Or should I call you ShadowLord? We meet again.”

A hundred thoughts raced through Morgin’s
mind. The entrance to the crypt was now almost clear. If he could rescue
Rhianne, who lay unconscious on the ground behind Salula, he could climb over
the last few rocks in the slash, and gain access to the crypt. But what then?

He glanced toward his sword, sheathed and leaning against
a large boulder far to one side. It would be a race between him and the
halfman, but Salula had a sword in his hand, and he completed Morgin’s
thought for him. “No, Elhiyne. I’ll cut you down
before you get there. Then I’ll kill the pretty one behind me, and
take that blade to my king.”

He slashed the obsidian blade through the air between
them, threw back his head and laughed, an evil caw that sent waves of fear
coursing through Morgin’s soul.

He had one chance, and he remembered that Benesh’ere
lore told him he must not command the steel,
for the
steel always commands
. So he held out his hand toward the blade, palm
open, and he said, “Please, come to me.”

As Salula stepped in and thrust with the obsidian blade,
Morgin’s sword teetered toward him, slid out of its sheath and
shot across the space between them, the hilt smacking into the palm of his
hand. He turned the blade’s momentum into a slashing parry, and a
blinding shower of sparks erupted where steel met glass. Salula staggered
backward, so Morgin lunged, but the halfman parried, and again the two blades
showered them with sparks as they met. They disengaged, separated and stood
facing one another in a crouch.

Those two strokes had taught Morgin something. Salula had
neither the finesse nor speed of the swordsman, and Morgin had grown since they’d
last met, in physical size, maturity, and understanding of his powers. The
halfman could no longer count on his advantages of strength, brutality and
ruthlessness to win this match. When Morgin met Salula’s eyes, he
saw that the halfman also understood these things.

Salula grinned, danced backward a few steps, stepped over
Rhianne’s unconscious form, looked down at her and raised his
sword high. Morgin screamed and charged as the halfman brought his blade down,
clumsily deflected it so it bit into the earth near her head, then slammed into
the halfman.

The two of them tumbled to the granite of the shelf, and
something bit sharply into Morgin’s side as Salula’s
head slammed into the rock. They came to a stop with Morgin on top of the
semiconscious halfman, but a sharp lance of pain in his chest prevented him
from taking advantage of it. He rolled off Salula, felt blood coursing from a
wound in his chest just under his right arm.

Salula groaned as Morgin staggered to his feet, still
holding onto his sword, and he saw that the halfman held a blooded, obsidian
dagger in his off hand. He tried to raise his sword to strike at the halfman,
but a lance of pain slashed through him and he could barely maintain his hold
on his sword, let alone strike the halfman down with it. The ground teetered
beneath him, he staggered backward into the shadows hiding the entrance to the
crypt, stumbled over one of the rocks he hadn’t yet removed and
fell deeper into his shadowmagic. He barely managed to climb to his feet as
waves of dizziness sent him staggering about in the shadows he’d
created centuries ago.

~~~

Morgin staggered into the skeleton king’s
crypt, struggling to hold onto consciousness, clutching at the stone wall of
the tunnel entrance to stay on his feet. Blood pulsed from the wound in his
side, and had already soaked his tunic and breeches all the way to his boots. He
had no idea how long it would take Salula to find his way through the
shadowmagic obscuring the entrance to the crypt. It would slow the halfman, but
not for long, so Morgin probably had only a few heartbeats before Salula found
him.

He tried to turn back because his Rhianne was out there,
but the ground tilted crazily beneath his feet and he dropped to his knees,
then fell forward onto his hands. He tried crawling, no real destination in
mind, driven by a stubborn refusal to simply give up and let the halfman have
his way. He ended up lying on his chest, the sword still gripped in his right
hand, dragging himself through the dust that centuries had deposited on the
floor.

The skeleton king still sat upon his throne as Morgin
remembered him, unchanged from the first time he’d seen him in
this crypt, when he lay dying in the enchanted alcove in Castle Elhiyne. And
then later—or was it earlier, centuries earlier—he
and Morddon had carefully positioned him in his crypt, using Morgin’s
memories to properly lay the king to rest. In
life Aethon had been a majestic king, filled with vigor and vitality, while in
death he was no more than a skeleton of bones and tufts of hair, seated upon
his throne, one skeletal arm resting casually on an armrest, the other on the
hilt of the great sword.

Aethon’s
hand seemed oddly indistinct, as if the bleached white bones of his fingers
were changing, fleshing out. Morgin’s eyes moved to the crowned
skull, a grinning white mask of death framing eye sockets of black shadow. The
skeleton moved; its head turned; the eyeless pits looked upon Morgin, then
looked past him.

Morgin turned his head
and looked back, following the skeleton king’s gaze. The wall of
the crypt now opened into the enchanted alcove in Elhiyne, and there he saw his
own past as he lay there dying from a Kull crossbow bolt through the chest. When
Valso and the Tulalane had occupied Castle Elhiyne, he’d tried to
sneak in with the help of his shadows, but Valso had discovered him and the
Kulls had given chase. He’d stumbled into two halfmen in an empty
corridor, one had put a crossbow bolt through his chest, and he’d
crawled into the alcove to die. Back then he’d thought the connection
between the alcove and the skeleton king’s crypt was merely a
figment of a dream. But now he understood that the gods twisted time and reality
to suit their purposes. The skeleton king would heal that Morgin from the past,
and he and Nicki would kill the Tulalane in the sanctum, Olivia would accuse
him of cowardice, and he’d ride against Illalla’s
army, ride to meet MorginDeath at Csairne Glen. And now, more than two years
later, he found himself dying again in Aethon’s crypt, looking back
upon his own death in the past.

With his last bit of
strength, he turned his head and looked once again upon the skeleton king. Aethon’s
flesh continued to form; the face filled out: a young face he and Morddon
remembered well, strong, handsome. The eyes were no longer pits of shadow but
pools of sorrow and mercy, and Aethon was once again a king of life and health,
seated upon his throne dressed in a suit of golden mail and glimmering silk and
rich leather. The tapestries on the walls shone with the brilliance of their
colors again, and the assorted trappings of arms and armor were clean and
bright once more.

Something turned over
in Morgin’s chest. He coughed up a mouthful of blood, saw himself
as if from a great distance lying helpless on the floor of Aethon’s
crypt. He had many regrets: that he wouldn’t be there to save
Rhianne from Salula, that he couldn’t save his friend France from
Salula. But most of all he regretted that he wouldn’t be there to
see that untamed lock of hair once more escape the tangle of tresses atop
Rhianne’s head. With his last breath, he regretted that most.

~~~

Aethon watched in sadness as his friend, Lord Mortal,
died once more, still clutching his simple and unadorned sword. He could never
think of him as Morgin, for that was not a real name. Hopefully, someday in the
future or the past, the poor fellow would find his true name.

Aethon waited, and in a few heartbeats, Lord Mortal’s
corpse decayed into ruin. Aethon looked across the crypt to the enchanted
alcove where the fatally wounded Lord Mortal of two years ago had stumbled in
to die the first time. Just a moment ago for the older Lord Mortal at his feet,
two years ago for the younger Lord Mortal in the enchanted alcove; all the same
in this place where the gods had brought the past and present together.

He stood, and slowly crossed the floor of the crypt,
entered the enchanted alcove in which the younger Lord Mortal had died. He
knelt beside him and mourned him briefly, then he placed a hand gently on the
mortal wound in his chest, a wound from which the pulse of life had ceased. With both hands he lifted the younger Lord Mortal’s
lifeless form, holding him tightly against his own breast. Looking old and sad,
he closed his eyes and bowed his head, whispering softly, “Forgive
me, mortal, for what I must do.”

After a time, he laid
the younger Lord Mortal gently on the dust-covered floor of the enchanted
alcove. The wound in the young man’s chest had disappeared, though
dried blood still caked his tunic. He turned back to his throne, noticed that
the older Lord Mortal lying on the floor of the crypt was now no more than a
skeleton dressed in rags, the bones of his hand still clutching the plain and
unadorned sword. As he walked past him, he had a thought and looked back to the
younger Lord Mortal lying in the alcove with no sword or weapon. The younger
Lord Mortal would need a sword, while the older one was done with that blade. So
he bent down carefully over the older Lord Mortal and removed the simple,
unadorned sword from his skeletal grasp, then returned to where the younger
Lord Mortal lay in the alcove. He stooped down, placed the sword’s
hilt in the young man’s hand and curled his fingers about it. “You
will need this, Lord Mortal,” he said. “May it stand
you in good stead.”

He stood straight
again and returned to his throne. He sat down, resting one arm casually on an
armrest and the other on the hilt of the great jeweled sword. Then slowly,
inevitably, the decay returned. The tapestries lost their brilliance and the
weaponry lost its shine, the enchanted alcove was no longer visible through one
wall of the crypt, and the king, powerful and majestic in life, was once more a
skeleton of brittle bone and rotted flesh.

~~~

A harsh grunt broke
the silence of the crypt, and Salula staggered into the tomb. “Where
are you?” he growled, blood dripping down his face from a cut
where he’d smashed his head on the rock of the shelf. “You
can’t hide from me, fool mortal, and after I have your life, I’ll
have that blade that my master fears.”

He looked at the
skeleton on the throne, and at the one on the floor, then his head jerked from
side-to-side as he searched angrily. “There’s no
place to hide in here,” he shouted. He strode across the crypt to
a shield leaning against one wall, kicked it aside and looked behind it. “Nothing,”
he screamed.

He ripped a moth-eaten
tapestry off the wall. The centuries had not served it well and it shredded in
his hands, so he tossed it aside. He looked toward the heavens and screamed, “Where
is that blade?”

He flew into a
maniacal rage, kicking arms and armor aside, breaking anything that got in his
way, careful to look closely at each sword he found and declare it, “Not
the one.” He kicked shields and spears and other weaponry aside,
cared nothing for the wealth of jewels that encrusted them. “Pretty
weapons,” he growled. “Useless junk in a real fight.”

In desperation he kicked
the skeleton king’s bones apart, stomped them into the dust,
overturned the throne to look beneath it, then hacked at it with the obsidian
blade, cleaving it in two. He ignored the skeleton of the ancient warrior on
the floor, for he saw it possessed no sword, nor any means of hiding one. He
turned to the broken and shattered throne, screamed curses and hatred at the
bones scattered about it.

He finally stopped in
the middle of the crypt, breathing heavily, the air thick with dust. He’d
destroyed everything but the jeweled sword, and that he merely spat upon and
said, “Another pretty, useless thing.”

He turned his head
slowly and looked one last time about the crypt. There were no recesses in the
walls, nothing, no place to hide a blade, and no place to hide the body of a
badly wounded Elhiyne. He looked toward the entrance and the shadowmagic that
obscured everything there. “You and your blasted shadows. Used
them to elude me, did you? I stumbled right past you while you hid in those
shadows, didn’t I? Well I’ll find you and that blade.
No matter where you go I’ll find you.”

He stormed out of the
crypt, back into the shadows at the entrance, and left behind only silence, and
a floor strewn with the scattered bones of the skeleton king.

~~~

Rhianne rolled over, managed to get to her hands and
knees, but could make it no further as dizziness made the ground shift and sway
beneath her. She must get up, must help Morgin. She had almost summoned the
resolve to get at least one foot on the ground beneath her when Salula’s
gauntleted fist crashed into her cheek.

She tumbled painfully on the rock of the shelf, tried to
roll away from him, but his boot slammed into her ribs and she almost lost
consciousness. Then he picked her up, grabbed her by the shoulders and spun
her. She spun once, but not even the spell could support her and she tumbled to
the ground in a heap. A moment later she wished she had lost consciousness as
he picked her up by the front of her dress and held her face tight up against
his, so close she could look nowhere else but into those horrible eyes. “We’re
going to find that husband of yours. And when we do, you’re both
going to watch each other die, and it will not be a quick death. That I promise
you, pretty one. That I promise you.”