The splitting shell gave out entirely and sloughed to the ground. A slick and steaming creature emerged. Its head warped into a long, wolflike snout. The hairy thorax of the monster grew as deep as a barrel and blackened beneath thick carapace. The spiracles all down its abdomen widened into toothy mouths.
No, railed Kamahl, struggling to shape the magic he poured into the beast. No. Something pure… something good…
It was neither pure nor good. The creature's legs became barbed stalks with razor edges. Its antenna drooped and widened into a pair of lashing tongues. Its face began to boil.
No! You will be conformed to the new way of the forest. You will not be a monstrosity, but a noble beast.
Kamahl sent a new impulse surging into the creature. The glare of energy became blinding. In each violent flash, he saw a greater atrocity. The thing's eyes burst, its mouth drooled maggots to the ground, and its new shell split, oozing pink material.
No! You will be transformed.
The beast exploded. Its innards spewed until every plate shot free and spun in the air. The cracked exoskeleton slumped to the ground.
Kamahl fell back. Mouth parts still formed a coronet around his head. Little more remained of the creature. Gelatinous hunks shuddered across the thicket.
What had happened? Why had the transforming power failed?
"It did not fail," he muttered breathlessly. "It succeeded all too well."
In grief, Kamahl closed his eyes, and over the image of the monster he glimpsed the creature as it must have looked before becoming a monster.
The sentinel. This nantuko had been the druid sentinel beside the spirit well. She who had looked on his ascension with eyes of hope had been transformed horribly by the power he had awakened.
Kamahl lay there panting. He reached down to the perfect forest within him but found only a tangle that matched the Gorgon Mount. At last, the glory was gone from his eyes, and he saw this rampant growth truly. It was simply a cancer. What worse foe could a forest have?
Even as he knelt there, breathing raggedly, Kamahl knew he must withdraw and regain his strength. He could not advance i farther this evil night-perhaps not even in a fortnight. To recover, he would have to steal power from a dying forest, but in time he would return, whole and hale, to do what he must do.
Kamahl would descend to the Mirari sword, destroy it, and kill the cancer.
He will come soon. The First sent his thoughts down through the Mirari sword and into the heart of the wood. He has defeated your watcher, and once he has had time to heal, he will descend. He wishes to draw the sword. Do not allow it. Tell him what I have commanded of you. Convince him of what he must do…
Night lay deep on the Gorgon Mount as the First rose from the spirit well. Swathed in his death aura, the man was invisible. He floated upward and glimpsed Kamahl, sitting to one side and panting as if almost slain.
For a moment, the First considered killing him. No. That would only end all his best-laid schemes.
Setting his feet to ground beyond the mount, the First picked his way easily among the boughs. He had become a coconspira-tor with the cancerous wood. It opened a trail for him out of Krosan and toward distant Aphetto.
Soon Kamahl would be acting out the First's plans. A smile of glee lit the patriarch's face. Now he need only enlist one other barbarian. The First would fly upon the wings of darkness, across the desert and to the swamps. There he would acquire a barge crew, and pay a visit to Kamahl's other half.
Phage.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: TO THE DEATH
From malarial mists, a grand arena rose. Its curving wall lifted uneven battlements above the fog. Sunlight splashed across the dwarf masons who set stones atop it, and murky fog shrouded the crews that toiled below.
Shorn rhinos strained against leather traces, pulling massive blocks across rolling logs. Gigantipithicus apes hoisted cement sacks up long stairs. Goblin grunts worked the pumps or stirred the mortar or scrambled up ladders or sat in stocks. Taskmasters watched them all, their whips of black magic driving the whole machine forward.
Pain was the coin of the realm-pain and no little fear. Like it or not, Zagorka had become the usurer of that coin.
She and Chester made their plodding way among the work teams. Sight of that old woman and her doughty ass put fear into the hearts of even the most brutal taskmasters. The woman's disapproval meant Phage's disapproval, and Phage's disapproval meant pain or death. Zagorka preferred fear. If she could make the crews fear the consequences of failure, they would not have to suffer those consequences.
Chester snorted irritably as another mule, smaller and younger than he, bustled by beneath a crushing load of gravel. Despite his size, Chester's main use now was as a ride for Zagorka.
"Not much farther," she murmured to the beast.
He brayed in response, and nearby goblins shied as if from a blow. Chester's other role was enforcer, for he could kick over a rhino.
Zagorka and her comrade approached a particularly ominous taskmaster. Yokels would have called it a demon: a goat-headed, bat-winged, lizard-bodied thing that once had hid in a cave. It was a leftover from the War-but then again, so were they all. This beast had been hunted and snared by the Cabal, brainwashed and forced to fight in the pits, and eventually commissioned as a taskmaster. So far, it was not a very good one.
Zagorka dismounted and tugged the leathery wing of the thing. " 'Scuse me. You're Gorgoth?"
"What's it to-" he began, spinning around with teeth notching each other. As soon as he saw Zagorka, though, the red fire in his eyes turned greenish. His talon fell, dispersing the scourge-spell it had conjured, and his knees folded to the ground. "Zagorka! My humblest apologies." He bowed his curved horns and touched a furry forehead to the dust. "I am indeed Gorgoth."
Zagorka smiled absently, a look she knew inspired terror. "How does your work progress?"
"Well. Very well," Gorgoth replied. "We have met every quota for two weeks and are right on schedule according to the timetable."
Zagorka scowled. "That's too bad."
The demon's rectangular pupils closed to slits. 'Too bad?"
"All the other crews are running three days ahead-"
"But we are meeting our quotas- -and whenever their work overlaps yours, they have to wait."
"But the schedule-"
"You're dragging down the whole project."
"But-"
"Why not be first rather than last? Alive rather than…?"
Gorgoth offered no more objections. He had sunk lower with each reply and now lay prostrate before the old woman.
Zagorka stroked Chester's mane. "You've survived since the War. It's clear you want to keep on, but the old way of surviving-hiding and skulking-won't work anymore. You cannot hide from Phage."
The demon released a whimper.
"You have to drive these workers."
"I'll beat them to a pulp-"
"No, you won't. Maimed workers don't work. Dead workers don't work. You cannot beat them to a pulp, but you must make them think you will."
The beast lifted his homed head, and a cocky glint showed in his eyes. "Is that what you are doing? Threatening with no thought of following through?"
"No," Zagorka replied. "I don't threaten. I advise. I don't follow through. Phage does. She plans for all of you to die, whether in building this coliseum or fighting in it. I advise you how to avoid death." She took up Chester's reins and pivoted him slowly away. "Listen to me and live. Ignore me and die. It is as simple as that."