Later, after Gunggari returned Marrec’s earlier healing by way of his Nentyarch-given satchel, Marrec approached the block of ice.
“Where’d Eschar go?” he asked, his stomach tightening.
Everyone rushed over to look into the ice. A hollow space cratered the center of the ice, but the exterior of the block was unbroken. Eschar was no longer caught.
Ususi said, “He is a powerful demon. I could not bind him spiritually, only physically. He has the power to move himself from place to place; he said the same thing earlier.”
Elowen groaned. She said, “Does this mean we’re going to have to face that abyssal bastard again?”
Ususi responded, “If he continues to guard the Sighing Vault, then yes. Eschar yet bars our way.”
Fallon worried. Doubt gnawed at him like a vicious rodent, turning his stomach sour. All his dreams of power, conquest, and comeuppance paid to his fellows in Yeshelmaar had become pale things, the goals a child might hold dear, not a man. As he tramped on through the maze of ancient summoning stones, senseless traps, and chambers whose purpose he could not divine, the darkness whispered only one thing to him. The message was bleak: Fallon was a minor, expendable little player in a drama that had little use for him once his part was played.
The pain of the Rotting Man’s touch also continued to plague him, making all his thoughts slow and captious.
It hadn’t been that way while he was under Anammelech’s wing. The blightlord had nurtured Fallon’s tiny imaginings, coaxing petty daydreams into an all-out betrayal. For some reason, Fallon had believed that the promised rewards would make it all worth while. That shroud of comforting belief had been stripped from his eyes by his contact with the Talontyr.
Fallon was no fool. At least, he didn’t like to think so. Perhaps Anammelech had just as little use for him, but fed Fallon’s ego merely to bring him more fully into the camp of Dun Tharos. The coin the blightlord paid the elf for his reports of the doings in the Nentyarch’s court was also head-turning.
It all had come to this. He had a date with a servitor of an evil goddess. He wondered how he could have ever been such a fool.
Sliding between sleeping demons and past the defenses of ancient Nar conjuries didn’t aid his disposition. Fallon was a skipping stone and Under-Tharos the water; he could sense the ever broadening wake he left behind; his and Ash’s rapid passage enlivened defenses long dormant and woke creatures trapped for centuries in deathless slumber. Doors that gaped open and unmoving allowed him unrestricted access, but after he passed, he could hear echoes as they slammed shut, as if embarrassed they had allowed his unrestricted passage so easily, determined not to make the same mistake twice. He didn’t fully understand why the doors, the yawning traps, and the slumbering horrors were not already energized. Perhaps it was the doing of the Talontyr, whose power had reached out and calmed the surface in preparation for the elfs passage. Once past, the calm broke. As long as Fallon could keep skipping ahead of the storm, he remained safe.
He supposed’Elowen and her sad Crew were even then meeting the first of the things he had aroused with his passage. At least he could take some small comfort in knowing that his pursuers would fall ever further behind and probably be slain outright in the bargain. Of course, they were merely trying to do what was right, a course he had abandoned long ago to his present detriment. It occurred to him that morals might have more behind them than mere ‘happiness and light.’
He gripped Ash’s hand again, pulling the child along behind. As always, she gave no resistance. She never cried, or for that matter, even bruised. A pang of guilt, unfamiliar, assailed him. Didn’t he care about the unresponsive child and her eventual fate, likely horrifying? L. ater, if he had a minute to spare, he would investigate that feeling, despite its sudden unwelcome appearance, but he had to spend all his effort on staying ahead of the waking wave behind him. He worried that his wave of disruption would crest, and finally catch him up before he made it all the way through.
He considered the shape he’d seen in the very first chamber, a shape caught in the ice. He gagged then shuddered when he recalled a single eye opening way back in the cold, before he turned tail and fled deeper.
A luminescence he had only half noted earlier was growing stronger as he approached. It had a pale, green, washed out look to it, as if the light were somehow weary. Its light was stronger than the radiance provide by his hooded lantern.
“That’s worrying,” he said aloud to Ash. The light was the first he’d seen since entering Under-Tharos. He wondered if something had awakened ahead of him.
He turned to the girl. “You know, maybe we ought to reconsider our path, eh? I wonder if I just ran for the surface now…”
Without warning, the pain in Fallon’s head spiked. He cried aloud, clutching at his head, stumbling, sending his lantern tumbling. It was like a fire raged behind his eyes. His mind was on fire. He could feel his will to resist, his personality, his very essence begin to smolder in metaphorical heat.
He grunted, squeezing his forehead all the harder, trying to wring the pain away. The pain redoubled. The realization struck Fallon that the impetus implanted by the Rotting Man was more than mere direction; it was a malicious presence intent on hollowing him out from the inside, leaving a physical husk, a husk capable of accomplishing only tasks set for it by the Talontyr.
“No, leave me my mind!” he screamed, but as relentlessly as the tide receding, his personality crumbled under the repeated hammer strikes from within.
Memories of his upbringing at the hands of his kind sires flared and died. His time spent in training as a hunter under the cool green leaves crumbled. His brief love for an elven maid of surpassing beauty was stripped from him. What had she told him? “Oh, but for the piece of my heart you have stolen with your tender kisses…” No, it was gone; he couldn’t remember. Weeping at his loss, the knowledge even that his memory was crumbling began to flame and wither. His first contacts by Anammelech, who seemed so innocent at first, and all his later betrayals spiraled into darkness. Everything was taking on a burning redness where there was no room any longer for what had once called itself Fallon.
Then came something new.
Amidst the scarlet flames, a point of pure white light glimmered. With the white light came surcease from the agony and a foothold against the erosion of Fallon’s mind. The white light grew, faster and faster, and where it touched the pain was extinguished. Fallon felt his personality shuffling back from the precipice to which it had been forced. Finally, the attack ceased, and with it the pain broke. The compulsion was defeated.
There was Ash, standing closer than she had before. The girl rested the back of her hand lightly against Fallon’s forehead. Then she pulled back, a glimmer of interest in her eyes gradually dulling back to their customary somnolence.
The child’s touch had saved him.
When his strength was recovered, Fallon considered his options. The pain was completely gone. His mind was made whole again. In the aftermath of the Rotting Man’s treachery and in the face of his salvation at Ash’s intercession, the elf decided it was time to think about his future.
He would abandon his instructions from the Rotting Man. He would reverse himself, despite all the steps he’d taken, each step stretching back in tiny increments, in sum sufficient to propel him to where he sat, back propped up against some forgotten Nar tomb, the child he had kidnapped sitting nearby, and a foul green light from the corridor ahead painting everything a sickening shade.
What could be the consequence of one more bond broken when he had already severed his loyalty to the noble Nentyarch? Fear of the Rotting Man’s displeasure couldn’t be discounted, but Fallon had a hard time imagining what the Rotting Man could do to him that was worse than what had just been attempted. Losing himself was more than the elf could bear. The Rotting Man had miscalculated, or more likely, the Rotting Man hadn’t known that the child had the capacity to neutralize his foul power.