“Then prepare the spell,” Thalor says. “Bring him back.”
With those words, he releases the Miphato, who staggers, steps on the hem of his own robes, and falls flat on his back, groaning. What pathetic creatures they are, these mortals. Shanaera sneers, observing the bearded old man. She can’t wait to kill him, and kill this tragic excuse for aluinaras well. Then she will set Taar in his proper place upon Onoril’s back, wearing the crown of his forefathers.
And she herself will ride Mahra, as is her right as Taar’s queen.
31
TAAR
“Give me to drink. Pour out blood unto me.”
Is it my own voice which pleads, again and again, or the voice of the virulium inside me, begging to be sated? I do not know; it does not matter now.
All that matters is the urge, eternal and desperate and without hope of an end.
Rivers of blood flow all around me, but though I search, I cannot find them. My feet move like leaden weights through a landscape of dark shadows and twisted red lowlights. The stench of iron is in my nostrils. I am parched. I am famished. I am nothing more than need without end. My body, such as it is, twists in convulsions of tormented pain, and when these convulsions strike, I cry out to Nornala for mercy. But the Goddess does not hear me. Surely not even Nornala, in all Her power, can extendHer reach, Her presence, down into this hell.
So I march on, searching still. Torment without end.
But then . . . but then . . .
A shiver of energy pulses through me. It’s the first change I’ve felt in the midst of this endless monotony in what feels like a thousand years. At first I cannot comprehend it, this ripple of awareness, pulling me, moving through me, splitting me into tiny fractions. Then, as the feeling intensifies, I manage to yank some sort of awareness together, to focus and realize andbe.
“Give me to drink!”roars the voice of she who feasts upon my soul.
Her wrath looms over me, a wave of darkness seeking to claim and hold tight to what belongs to her. But the energy pulls me faster now, yanking apart what being I possess, hurtling me out from this reality of raw pain, out into the void of the Unformed. I laugh—I have no voice, no tongue, no physical being with which to make a sound, and yet what there is of me laughs with pure joy—joy I never thought I would know again—as I am carried from hell out and up and away to wherever my rescue waits. My prayers, such as they were, have been heard! Blessed Nornala has not forgotten me, has not abandoned me to the virulium and the pain and the demon. I will ascend to Her glory at last, I will . . .
Wait. What is this?
My laughter turns to screams as my essence becomes constricted, tighter and tighter. It is crushed, out of the extended awareness ofeternity back into a realm of time and matter, back inside a rotten, dead form. I fight, struggle. The pain is worse even than the torment I just escaped. I feel the physical weight, the putrid deadness, and I know this is not salvation, but a new form of hell.
My mind begins to awaken. I feel the place where the knife entered me, as though it were newly thrust there. A scream rips from my throat. My eyes flare wide—dead eyes gazing out upon a living world where I no longer belong. I roar and flail imprisoning limbs, my head shaking, my mouth slavering, a stream of pleading words struggling to form through inarticulate horror:“Why? Why? Why have you done this to me?”
As the initial pain fades, I fall back, my head lying against hard, stone floor. I stare up into . . . a face. A face which slowly comes into focus before my dead vision. A face I know so well, a face I have longed these twenty-odd years to behold.
“Father?” I gasp.
The word comes out garbled. I do not speak my own language, but a dialect of Ashtari, of hell itself. The word, meant to be rendered with so much love, emerges as a vile slur, spitting poison.
Those dark eyes look down at me from the face of my father. Of Thalor,luinarof Licorna. His features twist with disgust, but there are tears in his eyes as well. He grips me by the shoulders, his powerful hands trembling. “Taar, my son,” he gasps, shaking his head even as tears fall down his cheeks. “I know it isn’t right. Not yet, not yet. But we are working on it. We are working to perfect thespell. We require only enough power and the right channel for that power, and then . . . eternal life! It is within our grasp!”
He sounds like a madman, even to my dead ears. Mad and manic and delusional. But his fingers tighten on my shoulders, digging into my dead flesh. “We’ll make it all worth the sacrifice,” he says. “You will see.”
The sacrifice?
I blink—and in the momentary darkness behind my eyelids, I see myself, bound to a stone slab with chaeora ropes. A sacrifice indeed, slain in pursuit of a false god.
A howl of rage bursts from my throat. I thrash, writhe, but find my body is bound yet again, secured, no doubt, against this very waking rage. No doubt I am not the first dead man to wake in horror at my own existence. There is still virulium pulsing in my veins, reacting to the dark magic which invades me. If I could only get free now, I would rip this man to pieces, him and his unrotten skin and his spirit-filled eyes. This man, who plays games with eternity. This man, who killed my mother.
Thalor yanks back, startled by my fury. Someone else steps into his place, someone else grasps my shoulders and looks deeply into my eyes.
“Welcome back, beloved,” Shanaera says, smiling with her blackened teeth. “I told you we would be together again soon.”
I rip one arm free, grasp hold of her elbow. “What is happening to me?” I growl, my tongue spewing the language of hell. But it isa language Shanaera understands.
She tilts her head to one side, lunatic delight suffusing her rotten features. “You have come back to me, just as I always planned.” She leans in close, whispers in my ear, “And we shall kill them together. Your father and Morthiel, both. We shall have vengeance for Licorna and make it new under our rule. But first you must appear to submit. Do you understand? We have need of them still.”
I am shaking, ravening, red foam spilling from my lips. I want to tear my own flesh apart, to escape it, to let my soul fly free once more. But then I think of the hell from which I have just emerged, and terror chokes my rage. I cling to Shanaera, desperate, screaming.
