Rethak backed away, still rubbing his stunned, watering eyes, as his ears told him what was happening to his carefully hidden ambush. The ear-shattering roar of the strangers' impossible weapons made it impossible for him to pick any details out of the general cacophony, but that was scarcely necessary.
Panic roared through him, urging him to turn and run, but he retained just enough control to know how stupid that would have been. There was a steep, winding flight of stairs back there. He couldn't possibly get down them without killing himself when he couldn't even see. Not that standing here, waiting while Bahzell Bahnakson carved his way towards him seemed like a much better option. Some of the armsmen felt the same way, and he staggered as two or three of them shouldered past him. They ran frantically, bouncing off the wall for guidance, forgetful (or uncaring) of the stairs in their panic, and an instant later he heard fresh screams from behind him-screams which were cut off with bone-snapping suddenness-as they went headlong down the steep stair.
He blinked again, and his heart spasmed with sudden hope. The barrier of armsmen in front of him had shielded his eyes from the direct impact of that intolerable flash, and his vision was recovering much more rapidly than theirs had. He could actually make out blurry ghosts of images, and he rubbed more furiously, willing his sight to clear.
It did . . . just as an enormous shape, glittering with a nimbus of blue light, loomed up before him.
Rethak squealed and turned to dash after the fleeing armsmen, but it was too late. He was still turning when an avalanche of gory steel sheared effortlessly through his neck.
XVI
"Rethak is dead, Tremala!"
The sorceress' head twitched as Garsalt's voice spoke in her ear.
"What happened?" she demanded. "Was it Wencit?"
"No," Garsalt sounded as if he were about to wet himself, she thought. "It was Bahzell. He and those other two. They mowed down Rethak's armsmen, and then Bahzell took his head off before he could run."
Despite the fear quivering under the surface of their own thoughts, Tremala's eyebrows arched.
"Why in the Lady's name did the idiot let Bahzell Bahnakson into sword's reach of him?"
"I think he was blind until it was too late." She could hear Garsalt's heavy breathing, almost taste his panic. "Wencit cast some kind of light spell. It was so bright none of them could even see while Bahzell and the others cut them down. Phrobus! It was bright enough it almost blinded me through the gramerhain! I think Rethak's vision was just starting to clear when-"
Garsalt stopped. Not, Tremala reflected, that there was any real need for him to finish the sentence. A light spell! Who would have expected that? And yet, it was as brilliantly effective as it was simple. Wencit's precious Strictures prohibited him from using his sorcery to harm any non-wizard except in direct self-defense, but there was no prohibition against temporarily blinding them.
Even if it did leave them totally helpless against someone else.
"What are they doing now?" she half-snarled.
"They're still headed straight towards the chamber."
"Garsalt, there's no way anyone could go 'straight' anywhere in this miserable place, and he has at least four options now that he's finished off Rethak! I need better than that, idiot!"
Garsalt didn't reply immediately-not in words, at any rate. An instant later, however, a diagram of the temple's tunnels, looking for all the world like an intertwined ball of snakes, appeared before her. It floated at eye level, and she saw one of the twisting strands glowing red. It connected Rethak's last position to the sacrificial chamber, but it wasn't the shortest of the possible pathways, and she wondered for a moment why Bahzell had chosen it. Then she realized. No, it wasn't the shortest path, once its sinuous twists and turns were allowed for, but it had started out leading in the direction of the shortest straight-line distance between Rethak's position and the hradani's objective.
"All right," she said, "I see it. And I think I can cut them off here-" a flick of her finger turned an intersection in the highlighted tunnel a pulsating green, instead of red "- and at least slow them down. But I'm not sure there's any point, if Cherdahn doesn't get his damned demon under control quickly."
"Everyone's insisting the sacrifice is going according to plan," Garsalt told her. Then his voice dropped, as if he were leaning closer to her to whisper in her ear. "Everyone's saying that, but I think they're lying. I think there's something wrong. Maybe badly wrong."
An icicle seemed to go through Tremala's heart. She told herself Garsalt was a coward, whose fears were almost certainly influencing his interpretation of events. She reminded herself that Cherdahn was one of Sharnā's most senior priests, hardly the sort to get things wrong at a moment like this. Yet even as she told herself that, she remembered Cherdahn's original time estimate. A time estimate which had expired at least twenty minutes ago.
The unaccustomed panic flickering within her told her it was time to go, time to cut her losses and flee while she was still alive. And with Bahzell and Wencit following the route through Rethak's position, she could actually get past them and make a run for it. Unfortunately, Bahzell's never-to-be-sufficiently-damned courser was outside the temple somewhere. And, even more unfortunately, Carnadosa Herself had decreed this mission. If Tremala failed Her, the consequences would be almost as terrible as what Cherdahn and his acolytes were doing to their sacrifice this very moment. As she'd told Garsalt and Rethak earlier, Wencit's magic would only kill them, and that was infinitely preferable to other possible fates.
Besides, she told herself, Cherdahn really may still have things under control, after all, and if he can ever get that demon of his out here . . . .
"Stop being an old woman, Garsalt!" she snapped, venting some of her own fear in the angry contempt crackling in her voice. "We can still win this thing, and if we lose, how do you think She's going to react?" Garsalt made no reply, and she snorted harshly. "That's what I thought, too. Send the rest of the armsmen to meet me there, and keep telling me where Wencit is. And see if you can get anyone to tell you the truth about the sacrifice."
Garsalt glared at his glowing gramerhain with all the terrified fury he'd dared not throw at Tremala. She had to be insane, he thought. Surely she must recognize that nothing was going to stop Bahzell and his fiendishly effective allies short of the sacrificial chamber itself! And he didn't need to ask anyone for the truth about the sacrifice. The girl's shrieks had passed beyond madness long since. Now they were beginning to weaken steadily. Not even the Church of Sharnā could keep someone alive forever under its . . . ministrations, and they were losing the sacrifice before the demon ever responded to it.
Garsalt wasn't at all sure what would happen if the girl died before the demon yielded to Cherdahn's control, but he was certain that it wouldn't be good. Yet there was nothing he could do about it. Bahzell-and Wencit-were directly between him and any escape from the temple, trapping him between the sacrificial chamber and their own inexorable advance. Unless Tremala could, indeed, stop them-or unless Cherdahn could still somehow take control of the demon-Garsalt was going to find himself face-to-face with Wencit of Rūm or Bahzell Bloody Hand, and it was impossible to say which of those two would kill him more quickly.