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

  No illusory nightmares disturbed his sleep.

  Lan Martak tossed and turned, then half-woke. He rubbed sleep from his eyes with an icy hand and wondered what troubled him. Claybore’s nightmares were strangely absent. He sat up and glanced around. Nothing. He lay back and soon drifted again to sleep, the uneasiness gnawing at the fringes of his consciousness like a cat worrying a mouse.

  The moaning of rock moving sounded over the faint wail of the wind. Huge dark shapes moved with barely perceptible progress toward the camp. Heat radiated from each sleeping human, heat attracting the creatures. They rolled closer, ponderous and stony. Tiny rocks circled one tent holding a pilgrim. The stones crowded closer. The man inside cursed as a flailing elbow smashed into rock.

  Larger stones rolled up. A boulder joined them. The man’s curses were replaced by a high-pitched scream as the rocks, in a concerted effort, all rolled over him, crushing life from his struggling body.

  His death screams were caught on the wind and smothered. Even those sleeping a few feet away didn’t hear.

  The smaller stones ground themselves down into the bloody pulp remaining, while the larger rocks moved on—to another victim.

  And another and another and still another.

  The sentient rocks circled Lan Martak, waiting for their larger companions to come.

  The human slept on, dream-free but restless.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  No nightmares. Sleep, calm, restful sleep. Nothing more. Lan Martak awakened again, uneasy. The sensation of imminent doom hung over him and made the man sit up. When Claybore attacked through the dreams, he had something to fight. Now only a nebulous feeling of danger nudged at his mind.

  That made him more anxious than outright attack.

  He peered out and saw nothing but rocks and the cold, black, fire-lit sky. The stars overhead had multiplied in crazy profusion until the gleaming blanket covered a thick belt from horizon to horizon. Rather than hide from such beauty, as Ehznoll and his followers did, Lan Martak revelled in it. He took a deep breath, sucked in thin, frigid air. The shock to his lungs brought him completely awake. He sighed at the feeling returning to his body. He needed rest after his battles, and here he unconsciously did all he could to awaken his slumbering muscles.

  He took another deep breath, this time scenting the miasma of life. He frowned. Life at this elevation, both animal and vegetable, proved sparse. The scent of animals came even more strongly when he turned and faced the outer rim of the broad ledge on which he and the others had pitched camp.

  “Who’s there?” he said softly, seeing a small movement. The shadows hid further movement, but his ears caught the scrape of rock on rock.

  Before he could say another word, rocks pelted his face and arms. Startled, he fell back—and felt the boulder convulse. His shock at this unexpected yielding saved his life. Lan flinched, as if burned by torches. The rock rolled forward, crushing his blanket. His jerky motion allowed him to spin onto his feet. More pebbles streaked for his face and hands.

  “Awake!” he shouted. “Everyone awake. We’re being attacked.”

  The boulder rolling ponderously toward him blocked his view of the other humans. Lan’s mind refused to believe what he saw; someone must be behind the rock, pushing it, using it as a shield. Instinct made him lash out with his knife—at the rock.

  The knife scraped against flint and shot lances of spark into the night. That was expected. What took Lan by complete surprise was the shriek of inhuman agony from the stone. It cringed back as a small line left by his knife oozed thick juices.

  “The rocks are alive. Use your swords!”

  His own sword lay on the other side of the boulder confronting him. He lunged, his knife point digging squarely into the rock. He felt strong initial resistance, then nothing. The dagger was buried hilt-deep and produced another strident cry.

  Rocks battered his legs and torso now. He saw a pebble actually launch itself directly at his head. He dodged, but not far enough. The glancing blow stunned him. He fell to his knees, slashing blindly with his knife. The smaller rocks moved faster, but the large ones had the bulk to crush him. He succeeded in severely wounding another of the large stones.

  “Friend Lan Martak, what are these absurd beasts? They seem to be rocks.”

  “They’re alive, whatever they are. And they bleed when cut. Fight them, Krek, fight them!”

  “Fight?” the spider quavered. “I have no desire to harm any living beast. I feel so guilty about being forced to do so in Melitarsus. I have spoken to Ehznoll about doing penance. He—”

  “We’ll all die if you don’t help, Krek,” the man shouted. He slashed, kicked, and shoved, finding little pleasure in almost breaking his toe against immobile rock. He dodged around the slower-moving boulder, found his sword, and began slashing.

  The large rocks retreated; the smaller ones shot through the air like rocket-driven projectiles. Lan spun and, more through luck than skill, split one in half on the edge of his sword. Pulpy innards splashed over his hand and arm. The odor arising made him gag. The pungency of rotten eggs mixed with the acid tang of spoiled fruit to give the dying creatures added protection; no skunk emitted a worse smell.

  “How many are still alive?” he shouted.

  “Us or them?” came Abasi-Abi’s question.

  “Us. There’s no telling how many of them are attacking.”

  “Melira and three others are dead,” called Ehznoll. “They rejoin the good earth. May the sweet dirt accept them and nurture them, as they accept and nurture it.”

  “Damn,” Lan said fervently. He felt an obligation toward Melira. He’d saved her life, and now she had been killed. Anger fed his sword strokes. He chopped the top five inches off the nearest boulder. It screeched in agony and rolled away, leaving bloody marks every time the injured portion touched real rock.

  “Lan Martak, watch out!” Krek’s warning almost came too late. Larger rocks circled Lan again, singling him out as the humans’ leader. He looked up and saw a pair of especially large rocks coming together in a powerful nutcracker move. He had no way of avoiding them; his back was to a sheer rock face. In front of him was a miles-long drop off the side of Mount Tartanius.

  Krek rescued him with a combination of agility and strength. The spider hopped over one of the boulders, to join Lan in between. Six legs grabbed, caught, dug in, and twisted to deflect the course of the rock on Lan’s right. Krek grunted and heaved. The rock spun out, over the rim, hung for a moment as if disobeying the law of gravity, then began a slow tumble downward.

  Lan’s hard thrust rammed his sword halfway through the other rock. It screeched its unearthly sound of stark pain, shrank back, then rolled off into the night, mewling as it went.

  “That’ll show ’em!” crowed Lan. The animated rocks, even down to the smallest of stones, retreated. They attacked in the dark, with geologic slowness. Confronted with faster-moving adversaries, they stood no chance.

  “Yes, that shows them,” came Krek’s tormented voice.

  “What happened? Your leg. It’s crushed!”

  The spider hobbled on seven legs, one dangling at odd angles from abdomen to clawtip.

  “They’ll not be back. I’ve seen to that,” said Abasi-Abi, an anger about him going further than the deaths of the others. Lan thought the sorcerer railed as much against their slackened chances of reaching the summit as anything else. Abasi-Abi was as much a fanatic on this as Ehznoll.

  “Can you help me with Krek?” asked Lan. “He’s badly injured.”

  “I have no time for that. I must see if Claybore sent those rock creatures. I’ve never before encountered anything like them. If it is his magic that animated them, he’s regained his power.”

  “But Krek’s leg—”

  “He has seven others. Let him use those.”

  The sorcerer dropped to the ground, head in hands. Small snippets of his chant reached Lan and made him even madder. While he saw the need to protect themselves from Cla
ybore, the danger had passed. It was time to tend their injured—the majority of their party had already died under the crushing advance of the rock-beings.

  “I know only a few spells, Krek, and I don’t know if they’ll work at all on you.”

  “Do try,” said the spider in a level, offhand voice. “The pain is extreme.”

  “I wish Inyx were here. Her healing expertise is much greater than mine.”

  “She can only bandage. You must repair. I feel the insides of that leg so intimately now. Strange,” the spider said in an unnaturally calm way, “I do have seven others, but this one seems more precious to me. It is as if I would trade the other seven, whole, for this single one being repaired. Quite ridiculous, since I can hardly be expected to swing well on the web with only one leg.” The spider babbled on, shock obvious in his monotones. For that, Lan had little in the way of aid. For the rest, he’d have to see. Lan took the damaged leg and examined it. He felt his gorge rising.

  The leg had been almost totally crushed, held to the spider’s abdomen only by the outer layers of skin.

  “Abasi-Abi!” he called. “I can’t do anything for him. You’re going to have to help me.”

  “Away!” snapped the mage. “I cannot find Claybore. The devil is hiding from me. I seek him…” The man’s voice trailed off, indicating no chance of ever getting help from him. Lan Martak looked around, desperate.

  The handful of survivors gave as little hope. Ehznoll prayed for his lost companions. Two others who had been with Abasi-Abi collected the gear of the deceased. One other, clutching a broken arm to his chest, completed the roster of survivors.

  “My earliest days were unhappy, also,” said Krek, his voice shocking Lan more and more. The eerie, monotonous tone spoke of extreme mental trauma. “I was kidnapped while still in my egg and sold to an old king. A nice man, but doddering. I aided him in brief excursions against his enemy, who later became his son-in-law. You humans perform the oddest rituals prior to mating.”

  “Right, Krek, don’t we?”

  Lan fought his own panic down as he ran fingers through the bloodied fur on the leg. He imagined a large, tranquil lake, floating above it, drifting like a feather, sinking, sinking slowly into the blood-warmth of the water, soothing, calming, becoming at peace and floating… floating… floating.

  His mind ordered, Lan Martak began the only healing spells he knew.

  The healing he attempted exceeded any he’d ever tried before. Minor cuts and abrasions, even simple fractures, were within his powers. To restore an entire limb—that required spells more potent than any he knew.

  But he found that, once started, the process went slowly, smoothly. His panic had gone entirely. Only cool confidence remained. The elementary spells worked, but not to his complete satisfaction. While allowing one to work its healing, he began another and yet a third. He juggled the three spells at the same time, in ways he only dimly understood.

  “My fur tingles, friend Lan Martak.”

  He couldn’t answer. His mind focused totally on the healing process. Internal. Veins. Arteries. Nerves. He worked in ways unknown and unknowable. External. The fur. Talon. Joints. All rolled together in his mind as one complex painting, with himself cast as the artist. When he knew he couldn’t go on for another second, he did. He had to if he wanted to save Krek’s leg.

  Power drained more rapidly from his body. Lan had been tired before. Now he approached exhaustion. The more carefully he worked, plying the healings along Krek’s leg, the more energy he used.

  Hands shaking, eyes blurring, he refused to stop. The process neared a finish—too near to stop.

  “Just a bit more. Oh, just a bit more…”

  “My leg comes alive. It hurts, but it is a good hurt. You have done it, friend Lan Martak!”

  The enthusiasm and thanks gushing from the spider’s mouth brought Lan out of his trance. Sweat poured from him, drenching his clothes under the cloak. A chill wind blew across the ledge their camp had been on and froze him to the bone. But inside, as tired as he was, he rejoiced.

  “It worked,” he said in a hushed, unbelieving voice. “I did it!”

  “I never doubted you would.”

  Lan staggered and fell, the spider’s bulk supporting him. A long leg flexed slowly, painfully in front of him.

  “I do not think it will be functional for a week, but it seems intact, otherwise.”

  Abasi-Abi let out a shriek of pure anger, lifted his face to the cold night sky, and shrieked once again.

  “You bastard!” he raged. “You inutterable, blundering fool!”

  “Claybore?” asked Lan.

  “You!”

  “What? What’d I do?”

  “Your spells. They confused my scrying and allowed Claybore to elude me. I… I almost had him! And that spell blanketed me.”

  “How could it?” I only used simple healing spells.”

  “Simple? You wove three of them. That’s not simple. You fool!”

  “It’s not?”

  “You decry your abilities, yet you fend off Claybore, you employ complex mixings of magic, you cloud the very firmament with your spells. Damn you. I almost had him!”

  “It seems your skills grow,” said Krek.

  “But… I didn’t use any spell I didn’t already know.”

  “From what Abasi-Abi says, the mingling of those three not only proved potent in healing my precious leg, it also produced potent cloudings to his spells.”

  “But he’s a full-blown mage. He and Claybore operate on levels I don’t even know exist. How can I foul anything Abasi-Abi does?”

  “He thinks you did. I must say, though, that sensation is returning to my leg in peculiar ways. Are you sure you had full control of your spell? I feel a quaking up and down that leg.”

  “What?”

  “In fact,” the arachnid went on,” I feel it in all my legs. I hardly believe riders approach. We are too high for earthquakes. This feel is materially different from an avalanche. If I did not know better, I might surmise the entire mountain was coming apart.”

  “The ledge,” Lan shouted, even as Krek continued his itemizing. “It’s breaking off. Get inward of the mountain. Get off the ledge!”

  He acted even as he spoke. He shoved Ehznoll ahead of him toward the sheer face of the mountain. The vibration under his boots told the story. They wouldn’t make it. The ledge shuddered and sank, even as he herded the pilgrim ahead of him.

  “The good earth will not allow us to perish,” the man was saying in his solemn, pontifical manner.

  “We’re over the edge if we don’t hang on,” cried Lan. The world disappeared from under his feet. Frantic fingers clawed at solid rock, seeking purchase, finding nothing. He slipped, his body tumbling over the precipice.

  He jerked to a halt and slammed hard against the rock face when Ehznoll caught hold of his cloak. Lan dangled, half-choked. He weakly kicked out and found a foothold for himself. He managed to pulled himself in to the solid rock, fingers and toes momentarily secure.

  “Th-thanks,” he gasped out. “We’re even now.”

  “Only the earth keeps score. Humans obey the whims of fate.”

  “Thanks anyway.” But Lan found himself in a predicament. Ehznoll clung above him and had some small chance of working his way parallel to the rock face and reaching a cut in the mountain leading inward and away from the broken ledge. For Lan to reach the spot Ehznoll occupied would require wings. He felt his strength ebbing and flowing; healing Krek had been costly to him. He now lacked strength to do more than cling.

  “Krek, where are you?”

  No answer.

  He hoped the spider had managed to hop away on his seven good legs and find a secure spot from which to launch a rescue. The thought of Krek vanishing over the side of the mountain, to land on the hard ground a mile below, robbed him of both will and more strength.

  “Ehznoll, do you see anyone else?”

  “I… no. I can climb up and reach a chimney. S
hall I leave you?”

  “Do it! And get help. Krek, Abasi-Abi, somebody. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”

  He averted his face as Ehznoll began a painstaking traverse on the face. Rocks pelted him; at least these weren’t living and malicious. When the rain stopped, he chanced a look. Ehznoll had gone. Lan Martak had never felt more alone in his life.

  He clung with fierce tenacity to the rock, refusing to look below at the impossible miles of openness between him and the ground, yet some perverse impulse forced his head around and his eyes to open. The vertigo assailing him almost caused him to lose his hold and go cartwheeling off into nothingness.

  “No,” he said, tightly closing his eyes, feeling the sweat pour down his face and being unable to spare a hand to wipe it away. “I won’t look again.”

  He did.

  A dozen feet below him dangled Abasi-Abi. The mage had fallen with the ledge; unlike the tons of rock, the sorcerer hadn’t continued on. He hung by an arm wedged between two upjuts of sharp rock. A few inches in either direction and he wouldn’t have been caught—he’d have been impaled.

  His head lolled to one side and blood trickled from cuts on his face. Lan wondered if the mage were even alive, then saw the sporadic rise and fall of his chest. Abasi-Abi lived, but not for long if he remained where he was.

  “I can’t,” Lan said. He had barely enough strength to hold on himself. Pressing bare forehead against cold, rough rock, he tried to order his thoughts. Yet he knew he had to try. He had to, in spite of Abasi-Abi’s curt manner and abrasive comments.

  Lan Martak found an inner reserve of power he hadn’t known he possessed. One small step at a time took him lower and lower on the rock face. He passed a spot sheared off by the falling ledge. The primal energy released in that rock fall astounded him; in a way, it spurred him on. He lived, breathed, thought, dared. He transcended the rock in its mindless power; he directed his waning resources.

  “A little more, just a little more,” he said to himself. He dropped down to a spot level with the sorcerer. “Wake up, Abasi-Abi. Damn you, I need help. Help me by helping yourself.”