Instead of finding an answer for that question, Leitos’s mind went blank, and his feet carried him through the veil.
Chapter 43
They came in a braying rush, the corridor wide enough for four men to run abreast.
Belina took an involuntary step backward, caught herself, and drew the fletching of an arrow to her cheek. The bowstring rolled off her fingertips. The string snapped, speeding the shaft into the teeming horde of once-men. Where that arrow went, or if it struck true, she could not tell. She did not wait to find out, before firing another arrow, and another.
To either side, her father and sister mirrored her actions. Arrow after arrow flashed into their foes. A Kelren stumbled and went down. Those at his back trampled him without pause.
More arrows flew. More sea-wolves fell. But as a whole, the attackers closed swiftly. After another volley brought down two more Kelrens, Damoc raised his voice above that of the bellowing slavers. “Fall back!”
They wheeled and ran deeper into the harsh blue light of the Throat of Balaam.
After a hundred paces, Damoc ordered a halt, and he and his daughters whirled. The Kelrens had narrowed the distance. More arrows thinned their numbers, but not enough. There was no telling if Sumahn and Daris were faring any better behind the sea-wolves.
As Belina’s fingers darted for another feathered shaft, she hazarded a quick glance at the quiver hanging at her hip. It was already woefully bare. At best, it held a dozen arrows.
She fired and reached for another shaft, praying not for herself, but for Leitos. He was the world’s hope. Her visions had told her so since the first. He was the world’s hope, and she was his shield. Unless it had all been a lie, a cruel fancy born of her imagination….
They are too close!
She nocked another arrow, drew, fired at a sea-wolf’s nose. The arrowhead struck lower, smashing through his bared teeth. She reached for another arrow, her movements jerky with panic, and then the Kelrens were on them, swords flashing. They howled with the throats of neither men nor wolves, but creatures loosed from the Thousand Hells. All they sought was the blood of the living.
Nola leaped back with a pained shriek, blood splashed across her face, her eyes wide with horror. A fist, wrapped hard around a sword hilt, crashed into Belina’s temple. She tumbled backward, and landed on her rump. Dazed, fumbling for her sword, she heard Damoc bellow. Heedless of the danger, he jumped between his daughters and the horde, slamming his bow into one monstrous face after another.
Then Sumahn and Daris were there, slashing through the Kelrens. Where they walked, death followed.
But there were so many foes.
Belina struggled to her feet, head spinning. She swung her blade, chopping off a reaching hand. More groping fingers sought her, the tips of swords and daggers stabbed and slashed all around. Inhuman faces leered, pressed forward.
So many.
Too many.
Chapter 44
The veil wrapped around him as it had before, caressing him, pressing in like jellied ice. And as before, his skin tingled. But this time, whatever protected him from the strange, prickling pressure building inside him shattered like an eggshell, allowing that cold ooze to pour into his muscles. It sank deep, past his bones, until filling his marrow. Fire and frost warred for dominance within him, and Leitos’s mouth stretched around a scream-
He fell through the barrier, his knees striking the floor of the Faceless One’s domain. Shaken but still upright, Adham and Ulmek stepped through, then rushed to help Leitos up.
“What is this place?” Ulmek breathed, the hollows of his face ghastly against bleached white skin.
Leitos hastily dragged his gaze from Ulmek. The man’s ghostly appearance stirred the hair on the nape of his neck.
“It is the enemy’s throne room.” Leitos’s voice sounded strange to his ears, heavier, thicker. Groggy, his bones feeling cracked by the icy cold filling them, he looked across the lightless plane. Gone were the lurid flames of before. In their place, shadows danced. But of his enemy, Leitos found him seated upon his obsidian throne.
“We should not have come here,” Ulmek said, all strength gone from his voice. Fear and dismay swept through the trio like a windborne sickness. All three retreated a step back the way they had come, then another step.
Leitos was first to gather himself. He caught hold of Adham and Ulmek. “We cannot turn back.” The peculiar timbre to his voice sank into the ears of his companions, and they turned toward him.
“Gods good and wise,” Adham blurted, lurching away. Ulmek jerked back as well, his sword waving uncertainly between him and Leitos.
When Leitos looked at them, his breath caught in his throat. Both were pale as specters, not just Ulmek. Gossamer strands of light rose from their skin, making undulating auras. The Faceless One had known they were coming, and had laid a trap of some sort. “What’s happened to you?”
“Us?” Adham and Ulmek said as one.
“Not us, my son,” Adham said, sounding near to tears, “but you. You alone.”
Laughter rolled like thunder across the gulf between them and the Faceless One.
The icy sludge within Leitos came alive at that voice, poured through his veins, gathered at the center of his being, compressing into a knot harder than steel. It fought to reach its master, threatening to take him along. He resisted the pull, but then he was shambling across the lightless plane toward the Faceless One.
Adham wrapped his arms around Leitos, trying to hold him back. “Help me!” he cried to Ulmek.
The Brother hesitated, shaking his head.
“You craven wretch,” Adham shrieked.
That broke Ulmek’s resistance like a hard slap, and together they threw their weight against Leitos, but still he crept forward, their efforts distant to him, insubstantial, the fluttering of a moth’s wings.
The ball of ice in his guts swelled larger, filling him up, pushing beyond him. Adham and Ulmek abruptly staggered back, hands held before them like penitents. Their fear seemed to feed his strength, and he drew it in until they dropped to their knees. Then he was past them, seeking richer fare, a pillar of it, not blue as before, but black as pitch and seemingly miles across. Within that darkness he sensed the weapon he needed … a power he desired above all others.
Each step came quicker than the last, until he was running. Faster he ran, until it seemed as though he soared through a starless night, his hair whipping behind him. The closer he came, the greater his longing grew, until there was nothing else. Fire sprang up where the knot of ice had resided in his middle, burning away the cold in his marrow and veins, filling him more deeply than the ice ever had. In his ears, in his heart and chest, in every limb, storm winds raged.
His hate for the Faceless One surged like floodwaters. When it burst from him, it was as though his skin covered not bones and muscle and sinew, but a red sun, leaving him to shine like a beacon-fire atop a mountain so high that the eyes of all men and every crawling beast could gaze upon it. He was the mountain, he was the storm, and more than all else, he was death.
Lost in the tumult of power, he stretched out his hand, and marked his foe. A crackling stab of lightning struck the Faceless One, cutting off his laughter, and from that impact flared an expanding ring of brilliant azure.
Leitos halted abruptly, eyes pinched to slits. The ring raced toward him across all that darkness, and before its silent assault, he detected a fleeing figure. The light burned brighter, and he recognized Adu’lin, his narrow Fauthian face stretched in terror.
In a single instant, that luminous burst scorched away the man’s flesh and bones, leaving a swirling drift of ashes, then setting even them alight, and reducing them to less than dust.