[Cenotaph Road 05] - Fire and Fog Page 2

  Claybore trembled all over, shaking down to the mechanical legs bearing him.

  “You have my tongue. You shall pay for this insult, Martak. You will wish you had died from my sword!”

  Again came the human voice, clearer now, distinct, and belonging to Claybore’s new commander, Kiska k’Adesina.

  “All is ready, Master. Hurry. We must go. My mage Patriccan can hold them back no longer. The troops are mutinying.”

  “I told your bitch,” Claybore roared at Lan. “I tell you. This only seems victory for you. On other worlds, I have triumphed. When next we meet, do not think the battle will-be so gentle.”

  Lan formed the most potent spell he knew and sent the bolt of energy blazing for Claybore. The leading edge of the energy spear wavered for an instant, then found only emptiness.

  “Claybore has shifted worlds,” moaned Inyx. “He has walked the Road.”

  “And there aren’t any cenotaphs nearby,” said Krek. “I ‘see’ one within a month’s travel time, and I am not sure where it leads. It might be onto another world, altogether different from the one chosen by Claybore.”

  “If we don’t hurry and follow him, he’ll regain arms and legs and become too powerful even for you, Lan.”

  “A cenotaph,” mused the young mage. “We can create one out there, on the plain in front of Wurnna.”

  “I suppose there are some bodies lost, but don’t you need to know the name for the consecration? It’ll take weeks to determine who has died and which corpses are which. Oh, Lan, that’ll take as long as hiking to the cenotaph Krek ‘sees.’ ”

  “We think in terms far too narrow. What to us is a hero is to our enemies a villain.”

  “So?”

  “It is true the other way, also. A villain to us is a hero to our enemies.”

  “I don’t see—no, Lan. You can’t do this. I hate him. I was angry when you denied me the chance to kill him.”

  “You would consecrate a cenotaph to Alberto Silvain?” asked Krek. “What a novel idea.”

  “There is more to it than novelty, Krek. Silvain’s fortunes were linked intimately with Claybore’s. Properly done, the cenotaph will continue to join their fortunes—and this world with the one chosen by Claybore. It is the only way we have of finding him among the myriad worlds along the Road.”

  Lan Martak left them behind to walk slowly to the edge of the black pit he had formed. Into this vortex of darkness Silvain had fallen. The flames of his life had been snuffed out for all eternity and his body irretrievably lost in a fashion not even Lan Martak understood. Perhaps the all-knowing Resident of the Pit might have been able to trace Silvain’s course through the universe, but the Resident resided on Lan’s home world, many worlds away.

  Lan’s hand rested on the closed grimoire he carried within his tunic. After a moment’s pause, he knew he had no need to refresh his memory about the summoning spell or the proper method of consecration.

  He began the chant, now surprisingly easy when uttered with the tongue that had once belonged to Claybore.

  * * * * *

  Krek pointed with his long front leg. “The cenotaph opens.”

  “Silvain,” muttered Inyx, remembering the foul deeds Claybore’s commandant had committed. But Lan had been correct. Silvain’s courage in assuming the magical guise given by Claybore to attack an entire city filled with sorcerers had been strong enough to open the pathway between worlds.

  “Ready?” asked Lan Martak.

  “Is this truly the world where Claybore walks?”

  The mage shrugged his shoulders. His powers had grown, but there were some—many—questions he had no answer for.

  “Let us leave this fine world behind,” said Krek. The spider boldly entered the simple stone cairn, wavered for a moment, and vanished from sight.

  Lan Martak took Inyx’s hand, squeezed, and then led the way. They too shimmered as if caught in summer heat, felt the gut-wrenching shift to another world, then came out ready to pursue their adversary.

  They walked the Cenotaph Road hand in hand, only to emerge on a windswept, dark plain on a different world. Only rocky expanse and jagged, cloud-crowned black mountains in the distance were visible.

  Everywhere there was the smell of… burning.

  “Looks like rain,” said Inyx, glancing up at the lead-heavy clouds swirling overhead.

  “Rain!” cried Krek. “I shall surely die!”

  Lan started to laugh, but the laugh turned to a cry of anguish when the first raindrop struck his flesh and it began to char.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Claybore attacks!” screamed Krek, his voice carrying the tone of pure anguish. The spider jumped about, rubbing one massive leg against another in a vain attempt to remove the droplets of acid burning through his fur.

  “It’s not Claybore’s doing,” said Lan Martak, shielding his face from the sporadic raindrops falling from the clouds. He winced as a droplet heavy with acid spattered wetly over his protecting hand and onto his face.

  “I burn!”

  The spider’s fur had begun to smolder from the falling acid. In his fruitless attempt to avoid the rain, Krek even rolled on the ground. Lan saw instantly that this made it worse. Every spot the rain touched caused the rock to burst into a tiny fountain of flame. Looking out over the barren plain, he saw minute watchfires springing up with greater frequency. When the rain began to pour down in a full storm, the entire world might be set ablaze.

  Inyx saw this and said to Lan, “We’ve got to find cover. Left out here, it won’t matter what Claybore can or can’t do to us. The elements will burn or boil us.”

  Lan closed his eyes and let his mind wander. When he found the dancing light that had become his companion, he enticed it closer, teasing, cajoling, promising. The familiar burst overhead and spread out an umbrella of pure energy to protect the trio from the increasingly vigorous acidfall.

  “Now, Krek,” the young warrior mage said, “let’s see to putting out your fires.”

  “Water! Fire! I drown and burn! This is the worst of all possible worlds. Why did I ever leave fair Wurnna behind? I could have made peace with Murrk and the other spiders. They’d let me stay high in the webs, swinging in the gentle breezes. But no, I walk the Road and find both fire and water to confound me!”

  “Lan, he does need help,” said Inyx. She furrowed her brow in worry as huge patches of coppery fur on the spider’s legs began turning into charcoal and falling off in gobs. “He won’t be able to endure much more of this.”

  Lan rubbed his hands together, then let his fingers trace out a fiery pattern that hung suspended in the air. The pattern took on new shapes and burned with an intensity equal to that of the rocks silently erupting into flame all around. Spinning, the pattern became nothing more than a blur, then sped directly for the spider.

  Krek let forth a shrill scream of almost human agony, then vented one of his gusty, spiderish sighs. He shook for a moment, then stood on all eight legs.

  “Whatever you did, friend Lan Martak, thank you. The burning is gone. But my poor fur….” Krek’s head craned around and studied the damage done to his fine leg fur.

  “It’ll grow back, Krek. Just wait and see,” soothed Inyx.

  While the pair of them talked in low tones, Lan walked to the edge of the protection formed by his magical umbrella and peered out at the landscape. Seldom had he seen such a foreboding place. The watchfires sputtered and leaped wherever the acid rain touched—but he did see a narrow path leading off into the cloud-obscured distance. Occasional gusts of wind cleared the horizon to reveal a towering mountain wrapped in a flame envelope. Other than this, the world appeared denuded of all contour.

  “Not even vegetation,” he mused, looking over the terrain. Lan realized this might mean nothing. After all, they had emerged on this world in the center of a graveyard. Around him stood small marker stones commemorating the passing of dozens of lost souls. The cenotaph from which they’d emerged was even more poorly marked, gi
ving it the aspect of a pauper’s grave. The more he looked around, the more Lan warmed to the idea that this was a potter’s field where the indigent were lain to whatever rest they could find.

  “Any sign of Claybore?” asked Inyx, coming to his side and putting a gentle hand around his waist.

  “Magically, I haven’t tried. I fear any use of a scrying spell might alert him.”

  “The umbrella won’t draw his attention?” Fearfully, she looked above to where the acid rain pelted down onto the thin magical sheet stretched taut.

  “There are hints of magic all around. This won’t command any more attention than the others. But you are right. We must keep the use of my spells to a minimum or we will warn him of our presence. Surprise is our greatest ally at the moment.”

  “You’ve grown in your powers so much I hardly know what you can and can’t do,” she said, her voice strained.

  He missed the tone.

  “Claybore’s power is still greater. And if he finds his arms and legs on this world, there will be no stopping him.”

  “The tongue won’t stand against him?”

  “I… I don’t know,” Lan admitted. He rolled the iron organ about in his mouth. It carried with it a metallic taste, but other than this he might as well have had his natural tongue. But the young mage knew the power of the tongue. He had seen the commands given for suicide followed instantly and without question. The tongue enhanced a spell, gave him the Voice, made him much, much more than he had been.

  And in some fashion he didn’t understand, it allowed him to more closely understand Claybore. This tongue had once been a part of that renegade mage; now that it rested inside Lan’s mouth, the two were merged in a subtle and magical way.

  “Where is he? Can you tell without the scrying spell?”

  “No, I can’t,” he told his raven-haired companion. Lan looked into Inyx’s brilliant blue eyes and saw concern there, concern for him. “About all I can find is what my senses tell me.”

  “We already know this is a terrible place,” moaned Krek. “An awful place full of vile things. Oh, woe! Why did I leave my web and my lovely bride Klawn?”

  Lan ignored the spider’s lamentations.

  “There’s nothing to be seen except for the peak rising yonder.” He pointed it out to Inyx when another strong gust of wind cleared away the veiling fog around it.

  “Don’t be so sure. Lower your sights a little. There, over to the right.” Inyx pointed. Lan followed the sleek line of her arm to a spot not a hundred yards away.

  “Interesting. They seem to be digging a grave,” he said.

  “Robbing it is my guess. Who else would dare the wretched elements on this planet but grave robbers?”

  “Quiet, Krek. Let’s go see if we can strike up a conversation and learn something of this place.”

  “I do not wish to speak to anyone. Not if they are native to this horrid place,” the spider said, sulking.

  “Then you’ll sit in the middle of the rain. The umbrella comes with me.”

  Lan whistled, gestured, and started off. The glowing protective sheet sailed several feet above his head. Inyx kept pace and Krek saw that he had to, also, or end up out in the searing acid rain. The arachnid lumbered along, grumbling as he went.

  “Good day,” called out Lan from a safe distance. The gravediggers barely stood four feet tall and were immensely powerful. Wrists as thick as Lan’s forearm twisted shovels and spades in the rocky soil. Their noses were bulbous like potato sprouts and the gnarly ears protruding from the sides of their misshapen heads looked to be more vegetable than animal in origin. One of the diggers turned a rheumy eye toward Lan, but other than this, none paid him the slightest attention.

  “Sociable crew, aren’t they?” commented Inyx.

  “You try,” urged Lan. “Sometimes you can strike up a conversation better than I can.”

  Inyx tried and failed. The four gnomes continued digging until they had a grave a half-dozen feet deep and two by five across the rocky plain.

  “Mayhaps they are incapable of speaking,” said Krek. “Or perhaps they are merely rude little buggers.”

  “Rude!” blared the one Lan took to be the leader. “We’re not rude! How dare you offend us by saying such a vile thing? The Heresler clan is more polite than any of the others—all the others taken together! Ask any of us!”

  “Did we offend you?” asked Lan. “There are many differences in cultures.”

  “You didn’t offend me. You? Either of you two fools?” The leader took a quick inventory of his men and shook his head. Hair the diameter and texture of seaweed fluttered over his eyes. He pushed the greasy hair back into uneasy equilibrium without even noticing he did so.

  “Allow me to introduce…” Lan began.

  “Who cares who you are? We have work to do.”

  “And he thinks he’s not rude. Wonder what the others are like?” asked Inyx.

  “Others? You have contact with the Tefize?”

  “What could it matter to you?” asked Lan.

  The gnome threw down his shovel and stomped over to stand less than six inches away from Lan. Chin thrusting upward, hands on broad hips, the gnome glared at Lan.

  “They are sworn enemies. Do you have dealings with the Tefize or not?”

  “No.” Lan used just the slightest amount of the Voice with his answer. Inyx cringed when she felt the power radiating outward. The gnome hardly took note of it. He only nodded briskly.

  “Good.”

  He turned to go back to his digging.

  “Wait!” Lan’s patience was nearing an end. “We want information. We need shelter, we need food, we want to find out if another has come this way. We need a lot of things.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Lan had grown up on a forested world where hunting provided the major means of his sustenance. Patience had become inbred with him. To lie in a tree over a game trail waiting for the right-sized doe or buck, then to leap down like an attacking pard required skill and determination and… patience.

  Since his magical powers grew, Lan Martak found his temper increasingly short-fused.

  “Krek, eat them. All four.”

  “Lan!” protested Inyx. He gripped her arm to silence her outburst.

  The four gnomes exchanged worried looks—or what Lan thought were worried looks.

  The leader barked out, “Get back to work. We have to finish before nightfall.”

  When one of the others saw Krek advancing and looked up at the eight-foot-tall, eight-legged horror, he swung his shovel as hard as he could. The blade smashed into the back of his leader’s head. The gnome crashed face down into the grave he was digging, never uttering a sound.

  “I’m leader now,” spoke up the one who had so creatively used his shovel. “Let’s negotiate this.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Lan. “Come, sit beside us so we can talk.” He didn’t want to tower over the gnome. Such difference in position lent an air of uneasiness to the one being looked down upon, or so Lan had found in his experience. The gnome plopped down and crossed his arms, looking expectantly at Lan to begin.

  “We are travelers along the Cenotaph Road,” he began.

  “Yes, yes,” said the gnome impatiently. “That much is obvious. Who else but traveler or a Heresler would be out in the graveyard? Certainly not the Tefize or the Kaan or the Willikens, damn them all. So. You have to be walking the Road.”

  Lan frowned. While many peoples along the Road knew of the existence of other worlds, few took it so casually.

  “Why don’t you walk the Road yourself and get away from all this?” Lan gestured to encompass the downpour of acidic rain. Every drop touched off a tiny explosion now, leaving behind a pocked and flaming crater. To be caught unprotected on that plain meant certain death, and even under his magical umbrella, he sensed a new danger. The air filled with noxious gases released by the flaming rocks.

  “This is home. Why wander?” asked the gnome, obvio
usly puzzled at the question. Lan didn’t pursue the matter further. Perdition to one was paradise to another.

  “My name is Lan Martak, this is Inyx, and the big one is Krek.”

  “Krek-k’with-kritklik,” spoke up Krek, “but the human palate does not seem adequate for the task of pronouncing a real name.”

  The gnome made a noise like he spat, then said, “I see why they call you Krek. I am Broit Heresler, head of the Heresler clan.”

  “Head?” asked Inyx in surprise. She glanced over at the gnome struggling to sit up in the grave. He rubbed the back of his head where Broit had smashed him with the shovel.

  “Oh, damn,” said Broit, springing to his feet. He scooped up his shovel and again smashed the fallen gnome in the back of the head. He added one last whack to make sure of the job, tossed down the shovel, and returned to sit by Lan.

  “Promotion is swift on this planet,” muttered Lan.

  “He was a tyrant, anyway,” said Broit Heresler. “And he did absolutely nothing to fend off the Tefize. They are walking all over us. Imagine. They denigrate the position of us gravediggers in polite society.”

  “What function do the Tefize play?”

  “They don’t do anything but cart around food and shit and stuff like that. Imagine. They never even leave the confines of the Home and they have the nerve to say we’re deadbeats.”

  “Anyone leaving the safety of, uh, the Home to come out here is hardly that,” agreed Lan.

  “I like you,” said Broit. “You’re quick on the uptake.”

  “Thank you. Tell me about the Tefize. How long has your clan and theirs been at odds?”

  Broit looked at the young mage and shook his head. He made an ugly face and then spat onto the ground. Where the gobbet hit, a thin column of steam rose. Lan wondered if the acid rain caused the fire or whether it merely acted as a catalyst and any moisture would suffice to produce the blazes.

  “Generations. Longer. It’s always that way. The doers pitted against the takers. Bodies’d build up sky high if it wasn’t for us. Who else is there to carry out the dead and put them in the ground where they belong?”