He didn't know the answer to those questions, but in the back of his brain a dark worm of fear had begun to grow. In order to bind the Servant, he'd been forced to weaken the bonds Sharnā's will had fastened upon it when it was entrusted to Cherdahn's keeping. He'd locked additional restraints into place, tied into the life of the sacrifice, holding it until the instant of her death. That was an essential part of any binding, for a Servant had no loyalty. It hated-and desired-all mortal life, and its most fiery hatred was reserved for those who bound it to their service in the first place. It must be held by the constraints of the Scorpion's ritual until the moment in which it consumed the sacrifice's soul and, in that instant, locked the new binding upon it even as the sacrifice's death dissolved all earlier constraints.
There had been instances in which the ritual had been faulty. In which the sacrifice had died before its soul was consumed. When that happened, the consequences could well prove fatal for the Servant's summoner.
But that had never happened to him, Cherdahn reminded himself, and it would not happen here, either. He refused to let it happen, and his jaw tightened as he stepped back to the altar and bent to his task once more.
Rethak of Kontovar no longer looked quite so dapper. Sweat and the stink of fear tended to have that effect.
He pressed his back to the smooth stone of a passageway and cursed the architect who'd designed this complex warren of tunnels and corridors. The temple was at least twice the size it needed to have been, he thought viciously. Its size was no more than an exercise in egoism on Cherdahn's part, and any priest with half a brain would have kept it as small and inconspicuous as he could have, however good its concealment. But, no, not Cherdahn! He had to flaunt the power of his deity. Had to prove what a magnificent temple he could provide even here, in a land where the worship of Sharnā was punishable by death for all concerned.
And even when its sheer size offered any invader too many possible avenues of advance. Rethak and Tremala were wizards-they'd been able to absorb the temple's twisting, twining design from a quick glance at its plan. Which meant they'd instantly recognized that there were at least six possible paths by which Bahzell, Wencit, and their allies might approach the sacrificial chamber. There was no way Bahzell and Wencit could know the temple's actual layout, but Bahzell was a champion of Tomanâk. He needed no diagrams. He could feel the concentration of evil he sought, could pick out a path to it with his eyes closed.
Still, even though there were at least half a dozen possibilities, they converged so that each of them passed through one of two narrow bottlenecks before they spread out once more. And because they did, he and Tremala had to defend both bottlenecks if they were to have any hope at all of stopping the invaders.
Which meant that one of them was going to find himself-or herself-face-to-face withWencit of Rūm with no arcane allies in sight.
So far, no dark wizard in history had survived a meeting like that.
"Rethak!"
The wizard twitched as Garsalt's voice spoke to him out of the darkness. A quick flare of bitter resentment flashed through Rethak at the sound. Much as he despised Garsalt, he envied him in that moment, because Garsalt's specialty meant he was safely in the rear, just outside the sacrificial chamber itself, where he could monitor the enemy's approach. Rethak's specialty, on the other hand, lay in the creation of glamours. He was actually marginally better at it than Tremala was, although the sorceress' other strengths outclassed him hugely. And because he was, he was stuck out here, waiting for Wencit and hoping the shield of invisibility he was holding over the armsmen with him would prove strong enough to deflect even the wild wizard's uncanny eyes.
"Rethak!" Garsalt's voice repeated, and this time it was louder. He must have increased the volume of the projection from his end, Rethak thought, because he could hear the throat-ripping shrieks of the sacrifice in the background, despite the thick walls and massive door between Garsalt and the chamber.
"What?" Rethak snapped back in a harsh whisper.
"They're coming your way, after all," Garsalt's voice said rapidly. "They'll be there in less than five minutes."
"Fiendark fly away with their souls!" Rethak muttered.
"What? I couldn't hear you."
"Never mind," Rethak grated. "Tell Tremala. And tell that worthless piece of Scorpion shit we need his frigging demon now!"
Bahzell Bahnakson led the way down the twisting, turning passage.
Houghton wasn't especially happy about that. Having someone armed with what was effectively a hand-to-hand weapon between the place any fresh enemy might appear and the members of the combat team equipped with firearms wasn't normally a formula for tactical success. In this case, however, he'd been forced to admit that sometimes there were exceptions to the rule.
There were no longer advancing through darkness, yet Bahzell appeared to possess something which was almost as big an advantage over his foes as the nightvision gear had been. Houghton didn't pretend to understand how it worked, but the huge hradani seemed to be able to literally smell the other side. Without him, the others would have walked straight into ambushes at least three or four times already, and if Bahzell didn't have a ranged weapon, the tortuous layout of this rat's nest of tunnels didn't exactly give very long lines of sight, anyway. There was blood splashed across Bahzell's green surcoat now, joining the burned spots the demons' ichor had produced, and Houghton had to admit that no opponent who found himself within reach of the hradani's huge sword was likely to be a problem to anyone else ever again.
Still, it offended his sense of the way things were supposed to be.
And crawling around in tunnels fighting demons and wizards doesn't offend them, Ken? he thought sardonically. It's not as if-
Bahzell stopped abruptly, and Houghton eased up to the hradani's right rear. The current tunnel was no more than ten feet across, a circular, polished bore of stone which looked almost as if it had been melted out of the hillside, rather than excavated. There was room for Houghton to take up a position which would allow him to engage past Bahzell, and he and the hradani had agreed that his field of fire would be to Bahzell's right if the opportunity arose.
Houghton had expended another thirteen grenades on the way in, and he'd decided, regretfully, to abandon the MM-1. He hoped Santander would forgive him, but with only three grenades left, and given the close confines of these tunnels, he'd decided that his M-16 gave him much better options. The M443 grenade needed to travel a minimum of fourteen meters before the fuse armed, and they hadn't seen very many tunnel stretches that long in the last twenty minutes or so, so the rifle simply made much more sense. The M-16A4 to which the Marines had switched was shorter than the older M-16A2, and more reliable-and accurate-than the slightly shorter M4 carbine version. With the M203 single-shot grenade launcher under the barrel, he could still make use of the remaining three grenades if the opportunity arose, and he had an entire magazine of 5.56-millimeter on tap if it was needed.
Mashita, on the other hand, was bringing up the rear, watching the backdoor as they advanced with the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon Corporal Johnson's recon section had left aboard Tough Mama when the LAV decided to go universe-hopping. The light machine gun fired the same round as the M-16, but Mashita had a plastic box with two hundred rounds clipped under the SAW's receiver, and four hundred more rounds clipped to his harness, while Wencit carried another four hundred. The weapon was notoriously inaccurate if someone tried to "John Wayne" it, firing freehand, but fired from its bipod in a prone position, it could lay down a devastating curtain of fire. Given the body armor their opponents were wearing-not to mention the toughness of creatures like the demons they'd already faced-Houghton was happy that both Mashita's weapon and his own were loaded with the black-tipped M995 armor piercing round. Despite its diminutive size, the tungsten-cored round was capable of penetrating even light armored vehicles, and it had become the round of choice for "reconnaissance by fire," given its ability to penetrate concealing structures, as well, not to mention its enhanced effectiveness against modern body armor.