[Cenotaph Road 02] - The Sorserer's Skull Read online

  Lan pushed his way up to hands and knees. He felt as if his innards had turned to molasses. Shaking in reaction, he turned over painfully and sat upright.

  “Friend Lan Martak, are you all right?”

  “No,” he said. “Yes. I don’t know.”

  “Magic?”

  “You sensed it, then.” Lan knew that the spider’s ability to sense the cenotaphs was more acute than any magical gift he possessed; that sensing of cenotaphs had to be only the edge of a more developed magical talent.

  “I did. The sensation was not unlike walls closing in all around. I felt as if I might be crushed. No specific threat posed itself, yet I tensed in fear. Never have I felt so weak, so miserable, not even when forced to slay in the arenas of the Suzerain of Melitarsus. How is it I left my web in the Egrii Mountains? How, how, how? Oh, woe!”

  “Krek, calm down. Everything’s all right now. The spells have passed. I wonder if I don’t owe our new friend a little thanks for saving me from Claybore.” He looked across the rocky flat to Abasi-Abi’s camp. The self-proclaimed sorcerer hunched over near a fire, head down, appearing little more than a grey lump in the evening shadows. The sun set rapidly and the blood-red cast turned to thick blackness.

  “The winds of magic blow strongly about this peak,” said Krek.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Lan, finally getting a measure of strength back. “And I fear this is only the opening round of a more deadly battle.”

  He and the spider joined Ehznoll in a meager, tasteless dinner.

  “Mount Tartanius is not easily scaled,” said Lan. “Look at that traverse. It requires the entire party to be roped together. If one slips, then the others on either side can prevent tragedy. Even then, it’ll take hours to cross.”

  Abasi-Abi frowned. His eyes darted across the indicated area of mountain, then downward to the slope where they currently rested. He worked it out in his own mind whether or not Lan’s approach merited more than sarcastic dismissal.

  “We can make it without such precautions.”

  “Try it and your guides will be dead. Are they so inexperienced?”

  “Are you so knowledgeable?” shot back the sorcerer. Lan felt a sharp pain in his chest, along with the bright glow of magic. As the man spoke, he uttered spells. His anger had overflowed and allowed a spell to be directed against Lan. Lan began muttering counter spells of his own. The pain slowly went away. The sorcerer’s eyes widened slightly in disbelief, but he made no comment about the protective spells.

  “Yes,” Lan said firmly. “I’ve spent much time on my home world climbing mountains. In the el-Liot Mountains I’ve scaled all but the highest.”

  “Were any like this peak?”

  “I’ve never seen a mountain this large,” admitted Lan. “But the techniques used for smaller expeditions are the same. Separately, neither of our parties will reach the summit. Together, we stand a chance. A slim one, considering the dangers, but a chance.”

  “What do you know of the dangers?” Abasi-Abi paced to and fro, hands locked behind his back, head down.

  “Dangers?” called out Ehznoll. “There are none. The sweet earth prevents harm from coming to us. And our new god is atop the mountain, waiting for us.”

  Lan glanced from the pilgrim to Abasi-Abi. The sorcerer didn’t inquire as to the identity of this “new god.” Either he cared little about the earth religion or he knew that Ehznoll spoke of Claybore. Lan Martak couldn’t decide which it was. The potent magics being tossed back and forth had continued throughout the night. He knew he sensed only the fringes of that magic; a duel of titanic proportions built.

  “Is your reason for scaling the peak worth the risk?” asked Lan of the sorcerer.

  “We all ascend for valid reasons.”

  Lan didn’t press the issue. Abasi-Abi was hardly a likeable man, and his occasional fits of ire might prove deadly. Lan rubbed the spot on his chest where the magical bolt had hit. While the skin remained unblemished, the innards felt as if he’d been burned. If his own reasons for climbing Mount Tartanius hadn’t been so overwhelming, Lan knew he’d turn around and leave this very instant. He climbed with a religious fanatic and a sorcerer whose anger might kill; he climbed to a summit impossibly high and fought Claybore along the way.

  Lan Martak shook his head. Life wasn’t easy. Certainly not as easy as dying.

  “An ice field,” he called back to Ehznoll, roped just behind him. “I think it’s safe.” Lan used the tip of his sword to test the frozen terrain. This miniature glacier had rushed out of a high canyon in the side of Mount Tartanius, then had been covered with a thin, bright glaze of half-frozen snow. The surface crunched under his boots as he tested each step.

  “Push on, you fool. We are exposed here. The wind comes off the mountain.” Abasi-Abi’s snarling voice reached him and made him mad. All day long they’d climbed difficult slopes. Simply because this ice flow appeared level and safe didn’t make it either. Just as Lan started to tell the complaining sorcerer this, he stepped down into… nothing.

  “Aieee!”

  He fell only five feet before the rope jerked him to a halt. But the precipitous fall had caused Ehznoll to lose his balance. Lan felt himself slipping lower and lower. The pilgrim appeared at the lip of the crevice, then came tumbling over, too.

  “Ehznoll, are the others holding us?” he called up.

  The man above him struggled for a grip on the slick, cold surface. Only after finding a tiny ledge did he answer.

  “I think so. We saw you go. I didn’t have time to brace myself, but Abasi-Abi did. I think.”

  Lan hung like a clock pendulum, swinging back and forth in midair. Below he saw only cold and dark. On either side gleamed blue-white ice impossible to grip. He sheathed his sword and took out his dagger. Chipping away at the ice as hard as he could produced no results. The ice turned the steel point and prevented him from fashioning crude foot and hand holds. He resheathed his knife and looked above him. By this time he thought the others in the party should have begun hoisting him and Ehznoll up.

  They hadn’t.

  The icy cold wind gusting up from the bottom of the deep crevasse felt like the very breath of demons.

  “What’s wrong up there?” he called. “Why aren’t they helping us?”

  “I can’t see.” The pilgrim closed his eyes, crossed his wrists over his chest, and began muttering invocations to the earth. Lan didn’t see how that was going to help any. He held down a moment of panic. He needed a set of rungs in the ice if he wanted to get out of here. He had to help himself. He had to do it right the first time; the cold sapped his strength more and more.

  If his knife hardly scratched the ice, his bare fingers would be even less effective. Using his sword was out of the question. In the narrow confines he couldn’t get a proper swing. Besides, if his knife failed, there was little reason to think his sword would do better.

  He shivered, wishing for a fire.

  Fire.

  Fire at his fingertips.

  Lan Martak had never used his minor magics for anything significant before. He decided there was no time like the present to try. Holding his right hand against the cold wall of ice, he concentrated on the pyromancy spell. Flickers of spark jumped from thumb to index finger. The spell became more vibrant, living in his brain, growing, spreading to engulf his senses. Lan felt a power burst forth inside him unlike anything he’d ever before experienced.

  A continuous blast of heat poured from between his fingers. The ice began melting. Lan whooped with joy and guided his miniature blowtorch inward, melting out a foothold, a handhold, another foothold. Able to stand in the melted indentations, he worked higher, the flames cutting into the ice at the top limits of his reach.

  What seemed hours later, he began climbing. The pressure around his waist and upper arms from hanging by the rope vanished, and relief came so swiftly he cried out in pain. Blood returned to long-forgotten arteries. Clumsy, he almost slipped. He tried to again perform
the pyromancy spell, but the toll on his body was too great. Exhausted in mind and body, he could only cling to the ice walls.

  “What’s happening?” demanded Ehznoll. The man turned and looked down. “Oh. I thought you’d fallen. Your weight seemed to vanish from the rope.”

  “What progress on top? Why aren’t they helping us?”

  “I don’t even hear them, but the tension remains on the rope.”

  “Can you climb up now that my weight’s off you?”

  “I… I’ll try, the good earth willing.”

  “Do it!”

  Ehznoll kicked toes into the ice and crusted snow, found footing, and began to creep upward. Lan helped as much as he could by continuing to melt handholds for himself and keeping the weight of his body off Ehznoll’s waist and back, but the more he worked, the more tired he became. All too soon, the fire at his fingertips flickered out and refused to return.

  “I’m almost at the top. But there’s nothing to hang on to!”

  “Call out. Get someone to give you a hand.”

  “Th-there’s no one up here.”

  “Damn,” Lan muttered under his breath. Cold white plumes gusted out and fogged the air between his face and the ice wall he clung to so precariously. He felt alone in this frozen world, abandoned. And from the sound of Ehznoll’s voice, he did, too. His beloved earth god had betrayed him.

  “A rock!” Triumph rang in Ehznoll’s voice. “I’ve got a rock. The good earth rescues me!”

  “Hurry. I can’t hold on much longer.” Lan Martak’s fingers and toes tingled with frostbite, even after their daring flirtation with fire. His back ached from the unnatural, cramped position, and the constant fear of falling even deeper into the bowels of the miniglacier gnawed at his courage.

  A sudden yank pulled him off his carefully formed handholds. He cried out in fear, then felt the rope around him jerk again. Higher and higher he moved, every tug bringing him a few inches closer to the elusive slit above. Iron-grey sky appeared, then white snow banks, then the lofty crag of Mount Tartanius itself. He fell forward, panting, his fingers clawing at the frozen plain. Never had ice felt better.

  “Where are the others?” he demanded.

  Sitting up, he saw that Abasi-Abi had cut the rope just behind Ehznoll when the pair had fallen into the crevasse. Some magical holding spell had pinioned the rope to the ground. This was all the mage had done. He and the others had then left.

  “I’ll kill him, I swear I’ll kill him!” Lan’s hand went to his sword, but reaction made him shake too much to even make the dramatic gesture of drawing and brandishing it.

  “Why?” asked Ehznoll. “We are safe.”

  “He left us to die.”

  “We didn’t. The good earth saw our need and rescued us.”

  “If you hadn’t reached that rock, we’d have frozen in the crevice. There isn’t anything else around strong enough to hold your weight.”

  “The good earth provided.”

  “Abasi-Abi should have saved us. That’s why we were tied together.”

  “Friend Lan Martak,” came Krek’s greeting. He turned and saw the giant spider trotting across the ice field. The eight legs and wide stance provided enough traction and safety that the arachnid had no problem stepping over the occasional crevasses he encountered. “You are safe. I ranged ahead, scouting your path. Abasi-Abi caught up and told of your plight. I came as quickly as I could, though I see now the effort was wasted. You are safe.”

  “I’ll kill him,” said Lan. “He left us.”

  “Do not blame him, friend Lan Martak.” The spider edged around, large dish-sized brown eyes staring at Ehznoll. “He encountered a small band of grey-clad soldiers. They engaged him.”

  “And?”

  “And he caused them to… vanish.”

  “Did you see any of this?”

  “No, but he told me about when he caught up with me on the upper slopes. I inquired. He said there was no woman among their number. I do not believe it is the same party we left cocooned in the foothills.”

  Lan sat in the snow, wondering if the sorcerer had lied to Krek. The spider could be very innocent when it came to human duplicity, yet the story had a ring of truth to it. They hadn’t been harassed by the grey-clads since the foothills. It seemed unlikely that the band led by Kiska k’Adesina was the only one—and time enough had passed for her and the other three to get free of Krek’s silken bindings—if not to follow, then to warn other squads.

  “If he defeated them, why didn’t he help us afterward?” demanded Lan.

  The spider shrugged, shaking all over.

  “The man is disagreeable,” said Ehznoll. “I find it difficult to believe he is a true believer in the earth.”

  “How far upslope is he?”

  “Less,” Krek said, “than an hour’s walk.”

  “Yours or mine?”

  “Mine.”

  “That makes Abasi-Abi more than three hours away. Let’s camp here for the night, then catch up with him as quickly as we can tomorrow. Krek, will you stay with us? I don’t want to split forces again.”

  “There is little else to amuse me,” the giant spider declared, squatting down and pulling in long legs.

  The dying embers of the campfire cast a dull orange pallor over Ehznoll’s face. Lan studied the man, wondering what drove him.

  Ehznoll glanced up and seemed to understand.

  “I’m a minor noble,” he said without preamble. “Born in Melitarsus, grew up there in the court of the Suzerain.” Lan listened more attentively now. “The city was different, in the old days. Look, do you know what this signifies?” Ehznoll reached under his robe and pulled forth a battered, dirty grey scarf. For a long moment, Lan studied it, wondering why he should know.

  It came to him in a rush.

  “The flyers wear white scarves. You were one of the air glider corps?”

  “That I was,” confirmed the pilgrim, sadly shaking his head. “I sinned constantly. I forsook the sweet earth for the sky. The freedom I felt was illusory. To soar, to catch the thermals and rival the sun itself, those were my sins.”

  “The glider pilots do necessary work for Melitarsus. While I was there, they scouted for grasshopper incursions into the city.”

  “They do that still? Good,” he said, “because it is their only worthwhile function. On the ground, the nobles treat the pilots with respect, with awe, with more. The glider corps is always invited to Nashua’s parties.”

  Ehznoll stared into the fire, his eyes no longer fanatical. He was a man remembering. Not all the memories were fond ones.

  “I discovered the endless orgies weren’t for me. The more I extended myself trying to tell the others of the errors of their ways, the more they laughed at me. Flying became more than a job for me; it became an obsession. Only in the air could I be free of Nashira and the witch spells she uses.”

  “What spells?” asked Lan, trying to sound casual.

  “Compulsions. She is a wizard.” He laughed at his slight pun. “She is extraordinarily adept at making others do as she bids. Nothing overt. Nashira is always subtle.”

  Lan had learned that the hard way.

  “And her unholy tastes,” said Ehznoll, the light of a fanatic returning slowly to his eyes. “Her son! Kyle is a monster! He… he does things so unspeakable even I, a holy man, dare not dwell on the description lest I be subverted.”

  “Is a child so evil?”

  “Worse. Nashira is subtle. Kyle’s raw wizardry shakes the foundations of Melitarsus itself. One day, when he deposes his mother, then will be carnage.”

  “What of the grey soldiers? Why doesn’t Nashira fear them?”

  “She sees no threat at all to her power. She is a supreme egotist. Nothing that will disturb her can be uttered within her hearing; that is her greatest spell and that will be her downfall. Pleasure,” growled the pilgrim, “is all she lives for.

  “I found the true faith one summer. A pilgrim on her way to Mount Tart
anius stopped in Melitarsus for the night. We… we shared cultures and I found hers better. I became a disciple of the good earth.”

  “Just like that?”

  “She was very persuasive. And the night was long.”

  The embers died down, only small hissings sounding when an occasional snowflake touched their still-glowing hearts. Ribbons of white smoke curled upward, to be caught and dazzled by the eddies of wind whirling around the edge of the mountain.

  “I left it all behind. The court of the Suzerain, lovely Melitarsus, the soft living, everything. Even the flyers.” Ehznoll touched the ragged scarf, his fingers almost caressing its silken length.

  “You miss it?”

  “Never!” Emotion flared in the pilgrim’s face. He crammed the scarf back into the neckline of his robe and rubbed his hands on the grimy sides as if absolving himself of some guilt. His eyes blazed more brightly than the fire ever had. Religious fervor swept through him, renewed, renewing itself, feeding on itself until it boiled forth. “I found all that lacking in Melitarsus society. Inner peace came to me.”

  “What of the pilgrim who converted you?” asked Lan, curious.

  Ehznoll didn’t hear him. The pilgrim had become lost in his own religious rapture.

  “The good earth provides for all. We rise from its dusty depths, only to return. It is what we do between rising and returning that matters. We do not worship the soil enough, nourish it, nurture it. We should. We must!”

  He continued on. Lan realized that Ehznoll maintained a normal appearance as long as his religion wasn’t discussed. Touch that subject and he became an orator, a proselytizer, a fanatic unable to reason beyond the dogma he’d been taught. Seeing that the mysteries of Melitarsus weren’t to be solved for him, Lan pulled up his cape and leaned back against the warm bulk of Krek’s abdomen. He positioned the magical breathing mask so that the eyeholes were properly placed.

  He stared into the dying glow of the fire—there was no more wood to be found—and felt his eyelids sinking. Sleep came.