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

  “The earth!” the man cried out, when the web-stuff over his face had been brushed away. “I worship the good earth. Bless you.” He dropped and kissed the thin soil along the bottom of the narrow canyon.

  A gout of flame lanced above Lan’s head. He ducked and collided with Ehznoll, who remained on his knees, praying to the earth. A second lance of fire ignited a strand of web-stuff dangling from above.

  “Fire!” shrieked Krek. “The dog spits fire.”

  Lan Martak saw his friend was right. The small rust-colored animal had backed up against the far rock wall. While the general shape and size of a dog, the beast had a snout more like a pig’s. Twin columns of fire blasted from that snout. The threat of fire drove the small spiders crazy. Some attacked and were cremated. Others launched themselves for their aerial hideaways, only to find the fire travelling along their webs more swiftly than they.

  “It smells of filth,” said Ehznoll. “I prefer the scent of the earth.”

  “It snorts something volatile, then ignites it just in front of its nose,” said Lan, fascinated by the creature.

  “It is a flamer. A creature most unclean.”

  Lan started to say something about Ehznoll calling anyone or anything unclean, then stopped. Arguing between themselves solved nothing.

  “If you are so captivated by the creature, friend Lan Martak, why not stay?”

  “Sorry. Let’s get out of here.”

  Lan, Ehznoll, and Krek backtracked toward the mouth of the canyon. At the top of a small rise, Lan looked back. A full quarter of the spiders’ webs were afire. A black pall hung over the scene, and the stench from burned fur and spider and web turned his stomach.

  “They’re intelligent,” Lan said firmly. “They need help. I’m going back.”

  “To die?” came Krek’s soft question.

  “Don’t you feel any compassion, Krek?” he demanded. Lan pointed into the valley. “They’re arachnids, just like you. Smaller, maybe, but still of your kind.”

  “Do you rush to save every human you see?”

  “I try.”

  Krek let out a gusty sigh.

  “That does explain many of our problems.”

  “They’re intelligent.”

  “Moderately so,” conceded the spider.

  “We can’t let them die. The flames are sweeping through the valley. Every last one of them will die.”

  “It’s the earth’s way of cleansing its cloaca,” said Ehznoll.

  “What?”

  “The fire cleanses and purifies. The interior of the planet is afire constantly. Magma erupts to purify the unclean land. This fire is good, even if it is brought by the flamer.”

  “I understand Krek more than I do you, Ehznoll. He’s afraid of fire. He can see what it’s doing to those spiders. But you? Aren’t those creatures of your earth?”

  “Are they of the worm, burrowing through precious soil? No! They eat worms.”

  “They eat anything they can capture.” Lan held back a shudder as he thought of how close he’d come to being one of those meals. “They’re thinking creatures. They need help.”

  “Abasi-Abi awaits us on the ledge,” pointed out Krek. “He and his servant Morto might press on without us.”

  “You found a way up, off the ledge?”

  “An easy path, even for humans, after the initial climb.”

  Lan felt torn between rejoining Abasi-Abi and continuing up to the summit and aiding the spiders. When the flamer snorted a gout of fire directly at one of the arachnids, catching it on fire, Lan made his decision.

  “I’m going back, with or without you.”

  He pulled his sword and rushed back down the slope. The flamer turned bloodshot eyes on him, then seemed to scowl. The spiders it understood. They were enemy. This two-legged beast was about the same size but of different texture and color. This slowness to evaluate Lan and his intentions gave the man the opportunity he needed.

  He danced around one hesitant spurt of fire, then lunged. The sword tip pinked the flamer’s haunch. It tried to howl in pain and spit fire at the same time. Whatever volatile it spat choked it. The flamer began kicking, clawing, snapping, trying to avoid Lan’s thrusting sword. Finally realizing its tactics didn’t work, the flamer raced down the valley faster than Lan could follow. By the time the man caught up, it had relit its flame.

  Lan faced a wall of guttering flame. He might get lucky and penetrate the curtain of death; he probably wouldn’t be able to come close enough to do anything significantly dangerous to the flamer.

  He glanced overhead. They stood under a suspiciously hanging curtain of snow. Tiny cracks ran up from the bottom hoar to vanish into a softer, newer layer above. The man had seen similar blankets of snow before. He began backing away from the flamer. Emboldened by what the animal thought was fear on Lan’s part, it advanced.

  Lan thrust his sword into the frozen ground before him and clapped his hands. The sharp sound started an avalanche over the flamer. Lan didn’t stay to see how much snow eventually thundered down; he ran for his life back up the valley until he came to the spot where spider webs swung in the gusts of air caused by the rapidly falling snow.

  “There,” said Lan with some satisfaction. He saluted the surviving spiders aloft, then sheathed his sword—and found his legs pinioned by new strands of silk.

  He fell to one side. More strands fell on him. He ripped skin off his left arm as the sticky hunting webs clung to his flesh.

  “Krek!” he bellowed.

  “Oh, very well, you silly human.” Krek shrieked and chittered and drove back the horde of spiders trying to again bind Lan. The giant spider excreted the chemical needed to dissolve the cords.

  “Don’t criticize. Just get me free.”

  Even as the spider did as he was told, Lan saw the desperate straits he was in. A hundred of the smaller arachnids now populated the webs aloft. They all vectored in on him.

  Webs shot and missed, some landed and were severed by his sword, still others were pulled free, but the fusillade came unceasingly. Even with Krek’s aid, getting back up the slope to where Ehznoll waited proved difficult.

  “Friend Lan Martak, I run out of the softening fluid.” The giant spider spat out another mouthful of amber fluid to dissolve the silk cords. “If you do not free yourself of more soon…”

  Krek didn’t have to spell out the alternative. Hundreds—maybe thousands—of the smaller spiders advanced on their position from the valley floor.

  “Go on, Krek, you and Ehznoll. Rejoin Abasi-Abi.”

  “Leave you?”

  “Do as I say! Now!”

  “Very well. You are being very testy about this.” Krek trotted off a few feet, then turned asking, “Are you sure you would not like company?”

  Lan Martak didn’t hear his friend. He prepared to meet the onslaught of the spiders he’d tried to aid.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A silken noose circled his neck, jerked him erect, and brought him down hard to the ground. Lan Martak couldn’t even let out a strangled gasp of horror.

  “Really, friend Lan Martak, you are being too good to those mere-spiders,” said Krek with some exasperation. He trotted back and severed the silk band with a single slice from his mandibles. “You are only encouraging them to continue their ways. No human will be safe if they feel you are a weakling.”

  Lan gasped in the thin air of Mount Tartanius. Never had oxygen-poor air tasted so good to him.

  “They come after us,” observed Ehznoll.

  “Faster. Let’s get out of here a lot faster,” panted Lan. Krek and Ehznoll followed. Eventually they outdistanced the smaller spiders, who gave up the chase and returned to their webs for repair and to await another likely candidate for cocooning.

  They rejoined Abasi-Abi and Morto on the ledge. The sorcerer’s disposition hadn’t improved, nor had their situation, which Abasi-Abi was quick to point out.

  “We are still too far from the summit. Claybore will arrive before us
.”

  “I don’t know how he can,” said Lan. “We’re making good time. It’s cost us enough lives,” he added gloomily.

  “Claybore is not encumbered as we are with bodies that tire. Claybore is not encumbered with fools who control their magics too poorly.” Abasi-Abi looked directly at Lan when saying that.

  “Look, Abasi-Abi, I’m no mage. I knew a few small spells, nothing more.”

  “Humph.”

  Lan didn’t feel like arguing. What had seemed like an easy path to follow even higher up the side of Mount Tartanius had turned out to be disastrous. Getting through the valley of the spiders proved too dangerous in their condition; Krek’s path up the sheer side of Mount Tartanius turned out to be better—after a while. Lan only hoped the spider meant it when he said the going got easier, for humans, after the initial precipitous climb.

  Abasi-Abi and Morto said nothing as they gathered their sparse belongings and prepared for the assault up the mountain. The four humans depended heavily on Krek and his web-spinning abilities in the next few hours; then came an area Lan hardly believed possible.

  “It’s incredible!” he exclaimed, looking out over the small valley. “There’re green growing plants, small animals. This might be two miles below us and not on a mountaintop!”

  “The geological and geographical details of Mount Tartanius are peculiar,” said Krek. “Never have I seen a mountain so tall also fraught with tiny valleys. Perpendicular rock is more usual.”

  “This is the home of sorcerers,” said Abasi-Abi.

  “The good earth provides for us on our holy pilgrimage,” Ehznoll furnished.

  “I believe Abasi-Abi,” said Lan. “This is almost bucolic.” A tiny catch came to his throat. This small valley reminded him of one he’d found in the el-Liot Mountains back on the planet of his birth. He’d planned on settling there eventually, claiming the entire valley for himself and Zarella.

  The grey-clad soldiers, Surepta—Claybore!—had shattered that dream permanently.

  “The entire mountain is of sorcerous conjuring,” said Morto, speaking for the first time Lan remembered. “Claybore had nothing to do with it. One greater than he forged this rocky spire and put atop it the—”

  “Silence, Morto,” snapped Abasi-Abi.

  “Let him talk. I’m curious about how all this came about.”

  “Figure it out for yourself,” said the sorcerer with ill-concealed disgust. “You’re the one with the power.”

  Abasi-Abi motioned for Morto to follow. The pair went off to fix a small camp some distance away. Krek began spinning a small web for himself, leaving Lan alone with Ehznoll. The pilgrim dropped down on a partially frozen patch of dirt and began to pray.

  “So that’s how it is?” Lan said to himself. “Within sight of the summit and we all go our separate directions.” He turned his gaze upward toward the crest of Mount Tartanius. Drifting white, puffy clouds obscured the uppermost portion of the mountain, but vagrant breaks in the cover showed a flatness that startled him. He’d expected a needle-sharp prow instead of what actually existed. But if the entire mountain had been fashioned by a master sorcerer, it explained much—and promised more surprises to come.

  The weather had been perfect for their ascent. Over two miles above the surface of the land—three above sea level—the oxygen content was nil. Lan and Ehznoll once again relied on the magical breathing mask found in the shed at the base of the mountain. Abasi-Abi and Morto existed on the mage’s spells, and Krek relished the thinness of the atmosphere. But most of all Lan noted the terrain. All of the mountain continually surprised him. Valleys that shouldn’t have existed did. The climb up such a towering peak required considerable preparation and skill; it had been relatively easy for them. The dangers had been present, but those were minor compared to some climbs he’d been on.

  He feared the worst danger of all lay ahead, atop the mountain, up on the level area.

  He hunched over, head on raised knees, tired to the core of his being. Lan Martak slept.

  He wandered through darkness. He snapped his fingers and uttered the pyromancy spell. Flames danced from his fingertips and brought light to the universe. He walked aimlessly at first, then some intuition took his steps in a particular direction.

  “Inyx?” he whispered. The single name boomed forth, too loud, too startlingly.

  “Help me, Lan. I… I can’t get out. The whiteness is everywhere. Help me!”

  He walked faster. The light from his fingertips glowed constantly now, a source of illumination for hundreds of yards. Ahead, he saw movement.

  “Inyx!”

  He ran forward, then stopped abruptly.

  “Am I your Inyx?” came Claybore’s mocking voice. “I think not.”

  The sorcerer’s skull floated at waist level. The eye sockets remained dark, sunken.

  “Why aren’t you trying to kill with your eyes?” he asked.

  “Like so?”

  Twin beacons of ruby death lanced forth. Again, as they had done before, the columns of light bent slightly, going around Lan Martak’s body. He knew that to reach out and thrust his hand into one of those now-curving beams meant instant death.

  “I don’t know what spell you use to counter my death beams. One day I shall have to find out from you.”

  “Abasi-Abi supplies it,” Lan said, hardly wanting to believe Claybore.

  “Abasi-Abi, that fool? Hardly. No, Lan Martak, you are doing it. How, I don’t know. And it matters little now. I have made it to the summit of Mount Tartanius. You haven’t. You have failed.”

  “You lie!”

  Laughter rang out, vanishing into the boundless dark beyond the limits of Lan’s light.

  “You have proved yourself a surprisingly worthy opponent. I misjudged you. At first I thought you no more than a simple-minded bumpkin from an underdeveloped world, now I wonder. You possess deceptive magical abilities. When I least expect it, you counter my most potent spells. Who are you, Lan Martak?”

  “I’m the one who wants Inyx released from the nothingness between the worlds. I’m the one who wants the Kinetic Sphere. I’m the one who wants to stop you!”

  Again the laughter, this time shriller, more hysterical.

  “So noble. Tell me, if I release this Inyx from her limbo, will you turn around and be content to live out your life on this fair, lush world?”

  “Give up the Kinetic Sphere?”

  “Yes.”

  “That tells me much, Claybore. You haven’t won, not at all. You aren’t the kind to bargain unless you stand to gain. The Sphere gives you too much power; that means you’re still looking for it.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “I do, too, but I don’t have it, either.”

  “Fool!”

  The ruby beams solidified into iron, trapping Lan, forcing him to remain immobile. The skull floated closer. The jaw clacked slightly, dead bone above banging on the three teeth clinging to the bottom jaw. Lan felt irrational dread of that skull, then calmed himself. He had no idea what spell he used to keep the eye-beams at bay, but it worked. Immense flows of power surged about him; Claybore put everything into this single assault.

  The disembodied sorcerer failed. As abruptly as he’d appeared, he vanished.

  Lan Martak awoke screaming, the pleasant valley stretching before him, the summit of Mount Tartanius a day’s climb above.

  “Stairs,” he said in awe. “Someone has cut a stairway into the living stone.” Lan put one foot on the bottom step, as if he didn’t believe it existed. Putting weight on it proved reality.

  “The good earth has prepared the way for the faithful.” Ehznoll stood to one side, bloodshot eyes wide in religious rapture. He had spent the entire night praying to his earth god. After the brief excursion into unreality and the confrontation with Claybore, Lan wished he had done the same.

  “The steps were put here by a mage,” said Morto. The man fell silent when Abasi-Abi kicked at him.

  “Is it safe?”
Lan asked.

  “No,” came the taut, crisp reply from the sorcerer. “It is very dangerous. I must go first, to explore, to counter any ward spells put along the way to deter us.”

  Ehznoll didn’t seem to hear. He began climbing, slowly at first, then with more energy. The closer he got to the top of the mountain, the more he came alive. His pilgrimage was at an end.

  “Stop, wait, don’t!” cried Abasi-Abi. Ehznoll had already climbed half of the hundred steps to the summit.

  “The way is safe,” said Lan. “I feel no magic. Not here.” From the top, however, radiated continual pulses of energy. The spells atop Mount Tartanius were potent.

  “The Kinetic Sphere is there,” said Krek. “I ‘see’ it so clearly it almost burns my eyes.”

  “You don’t see with your eyes, not the cenotaphs,” Lan pointed out.

  “A figure of speech.” The arachnid had begun his own way up the stairs. Lan followed. Behind came incoherent babblings from Abasi-Abi and soft, soothing words from Morto.

  As he walked, Lan cast out his senses for the slightest hint of danger. Nothing. The steps were perfectly etched into the mountain, the weather clear, his personal energy at a high. The weariness of the climb had been forgotten because of the nearness of his goal. The dream battle with Claybore, while enervating, had convinced him they were still ahead of the sorcerer. They’d reach the top first. And recover the Sphere, rescue Inyx, strand Claybore, and prevent him and his grey-clad soldiers from conquering every world along the Cenotaph Road.

  So simple.

  Lan bounced up the last few steps and stopped to stand and stare, Ehznoll and Krek at his side. Behind, still a quarter of the way down the stairs, came old Abasi-Abi and Morto.

  “Think of the forces that did this,” Lan said in a soft voice.

  The entire top of the mountain had been levelled off, the surface polished to a high gloss. Looking down, Lan saw his own reflection. Over an acre of mountaintop turned into a mirror—and dropped off to one side of the mirrored plane, as if an afterthought, stood a small single-roomed stone hut. Ehznoll sank to his knees, crossed wrists, and began to chant.

  “I believe this is what our pilgrim seeks,” said Krek.