"But-"
"I'm not going back to Kontovar to tell Her I decided to run away rather than face him," the sorceress said flatly. "Wencit's combat magic can only kill us, you know."
Rethak's jaw worked for a moment. Then he jerked a nod.
"In that case," Tremala said, "let's go make our visitors welcome."
Trayn Aldarfro's eyes opened in the Stygian darkness of his tiny cell.
It didn't make any difference, of course, so he closed them again, wishing he could close all of his other senses as readily. His cramped kennel lay deep in the bowels of the hillside violated by Sharnā's temple, and he could sense the mental auras of dozens of other captives all about him. Most were obviously children; all were starkly terrified.
Someone was sobbing in despair and horror. Someone else-someone whose ordeal had pushed him over the edge of sanity-was talking to himself, or perhaps calling to a son or daughter he knew he would never see again. His long, rambling sentences were interspersed with bouts of screaming laughter, or howls of rage, and someone else was pleading with him to be quiet, to stop, even though the person behind that voice had to know her pleas were futile. And layered throughout those sounds, counterpointing all of them, were the moans and whimpers of children trapped in a waking nightmare and the handful of adults seeking uselessly to comfort them.
The despair and hopelessness crushing down upon Trayn in that darkness had driven him to the point of mindlessness. Driven him to the very brink of a mage's final retreat into the mental shutdown which would lead inevitably to the body's death, as well. Yet even there, in that black pit of horror, the training which made him what he was-and some inner spark, whatever it was that made him who he was-had refused to allow him to escape. Had demanded that he stay, do what he could if even the tiniest opportunity should present itself. He'd come to accept that escape was as impossible as Tremala had suggested, but even as he'd accepted that, a grim, focused determination to strike back at least once before the end had filled the innermost recesses of his soul.
Now, though, he sensed something even worse. Sensed the stirring of an even greater malevolence, an even greater evil. He sat up, the chains on his ankles clanking, and his face went bleak and hard in the blackness as he heard something else-heard the voice of a young woman, sobbing, pleading, fighting as she was dragged from her tiny cell. She couldn't possibly have sensed what he had, yet she seemed to know anyway.
Trayn could hear her, feel her, as she was dragged down the corridor outside the closed door of his own cell, and he knew where she was bound. He knew what sort of death awaited a sacrifice to Sharnā, knew what the unspeakable appetite behind the malevolence he'd sensed wanted from her. And he knew no one could possibly save her from it.
His eyes burned with that knowledge. Then his jaw clenched, and he bent forward, pressing his hands to his temples, summoning all the power within him and focusing it through the training he had already received. He reached out, reached through that darkness and stone, until his questing mental fingers touched the surface of the doomed young woman's mind.
She was even younger than he'd thought, not yet eighteen, he judged. And in that moment when their minds touched, he knew she had already seen the deaths of her parents, her brothers, a sister. Knew she understood precisely what was about to happen to her, as well, and felt her hopeless terror beating like the wings of a dying bird against the iron bars of the inescapable cage about her.
She sensed him, too, though not as clearly as he sensed her, and he held out his mental hand to her. He took her hand in his, clasping it, offering the only comfort he could, and felt her grip close with desperate strength and gratitude upon his. There were no words between them. Trayn's major talent was not telepathy, and she had no mage talent at all. Yet if there were no words, there was a promise, and Trayn went with her as she was dragged down that passageway of dark stone towards the agonizing death awaiting her.
XIV
"So let me get this straight," Houghton said. "The two of you-the three, of you, I mean-" he corrected himself, nodding at the huge horse he'd been informed was actually something called a courser (and also a champion of Tomanâk)"-plan to go inside a tunnel none of the rest of us can even see. Have I got that right?"
He and Mashita had climbed up out of Tough Mama to join Wencit. Houghton had been careful to keep his boots well away from the ichor which continued to smoke as it ate its way through the LAV's paint. Aside from that, he'd tried not to think all that much about exactly what the "demons'" reality represented. Unfortunately, the towering, fox-eared Bahzell seemed completely serious . . . which probably meant the gunnery sergeant was going to have to think about them-or, at least, whoever had sent them-very shortly.
That possibility made Houghton very nervous, indeed.
Mashita, on the other hand, seemed all but oblivious to such minor concerns as gigantic, impossibly fast, armor-plated, man-eating, pincer-equipped, cursed creatures out of the darkest pit of Hell. He was too busy drooling over Bahzell's horse-courser, a corner of Houghton's brain corrected mechanically-to pay much attention to anything else, which obviously amused the courser no end.
"Aye, and so we do," Bahzell agreed in response to the Marine's question.
There was something about that earthquake-deep voice of his which made anything he suggested sound reasonable, Houghton reflected. However insane it might actually be.
"And there may be more of these things," the gunnery sergeant jerked his head in a sideways nod at the hideous, mangled bodies draped in front of-and across-his LAV, "waiting for you in there?"
"As to that, I'm thinking there's at least one more," Bahzell said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "I'm after feeling something a bit . . . odd about this one, though."
"'Odd?'" Houghton snorted. "So all of this-" he waved both arms at the abattoir hillside "- wasn't 'odd' for you people?"
"Actually," Wencit replied with a slight smile, "it's not very far out of the ordinary for a champion of Tomanâk."
"As to that," Bahzell gave the wild wizard a quelling look, then turned back to Houghton, "don't you be listening to him, Ken Houghton. It's dead I'd be, and Walsharno with me, if not for you. And its thankful we both are, as well. Still and all, we've some unfinished business down that hole yonder."
"What sort of business?"
Houghton knew, the instant he opened his mouth, that he shouldn't have asked the question.
"The 'raiders' Walsharno and I have been after following-aye, and the ones Wencit's been after chasing with you-are inside there, and they've at least one entire village's children, not to mention dozens of other folk, with them."
"And you're going in after them," Houghton said flatly.
"Aye." Bahzell's deep, rumbling voice was just as flat, just as hard. "I've no choice, you see. I've already said there's after being at least one more of these beauties down yonder, and so there is. And the only way Demon Breath's church can be after controlling such is by feeding them."
He didn't have to explain what he meant, and Houghton's belly knotted at the implications. Implications which, he knew, he should have already recognized for himself.
"And just how many people-how many soldiers-are they going to have in there with them?" he asked.
"Somewhere in excess of a hundred armsmen," Wencit said. "I can't be positive exactly how many, but that's a minimum number. And then there are at least three wizards, possibly more. Plus the demon, of course."