'What's that sound?' The Lord blinked owlishly at the darkness, cocking his head to one side.
Everyone listened hard as a sudden rushing noise came from behind, like a rogue gust of wind. The general turned as a wet gasp cut the air, instinctively diving away from the oncoming shape. In a blur of movement he felt a figure slam into him, and he saw the two guards fall dead behind it. Pain flared in his arm as a blade cut deep, then he was smashed out of the way. His head thumped against the ground and stars burst before his eyes.
The figure, the shape of a Chetse man, but with long claws and spiky protrusions along its limbs and shoulders, crashed bodily into Chalat and knocked the white-eye over. As the Lord tried to rise again, the creature threw itself upon him, flailing madly as a ruby light enveloped the two for a moment. The general felt hands on his back, urging him down; though he tried to move, his body betrayed him and he could only submit as Mihn, now free of his bonds and armed with his staff, advanced.
Chalat kicked his attacker away and the Bloodrose flared again as it absorbed another wound. Mihn immediately swung at the creature, but had to fling himself back when he missed, trying to avoid the raking claws. He waved his staff in a wide half-circle, not daring to risk another strike at the monster, but trying to distract it. The twisted perversion of a man had bony growths pushed through the skin; it looked daemonic, and the furious snarls sounded like the dying breath of a ruined throat, amplified by rage.
With the creature's attention on the foreigner, Chalat had the time he needed. Golaeth's coppery surface blazed in the light from the eternal flame and Chalat roared as he hacked down at the creature. The blow was somehow turned by the creature's arm, but it could do nothing to stop the sword when it lanced forward into its belly. Razor-sharp claws lashed forward as it tried to shred Chalat's flesh, but
the white-eye had already withdrawn. He struck again, and this time cut off one of the monster's arms, then as he chopped deep into its neck, it collapsed, flailing violently before falling abruptly, rigid. One last twitch came, then it was still.
Chalat looked up at Mihn and bared his teeth in some sort of a smile.
'Well done.' He sounded husky with barely restrained aggression. Chalat hardly cared for the duties of state, but fighting in his tribe's need was always joyfully done.
'See.to the general; those three are dead.' Chalat stood over the corpse for a moment, then stabbed his sword down into its chest, driving it on into the rock below.
The foreigner jumped at the sudden sound, then crouched down over the general, peering into his eyes. He nodded to himself, and took the general's dagger from his belt. With an assured movement he cut away the sleeve of the general's shirt and tied that above the bleeding arm; the other sleeve was similarly removed and used to bandage the wound itself.
'It's a clean cut, but deep,' he told Chalat. When he received no reply, he looked up from his charge. The Lord was squatting by the creature's head, muttering something, one hand placed flat against the ground. A tremble ran through the stone beneath their feet, rippling towards the white-eye, and then a face appeared on the temple floor. The flat stone billowed up, as though it was nothing more than a sheet of silk held up against a man's face, though the face was far from human. Though the eyes were overly large and the thick jaw extended too far back, somehow there was a beauty in the curve of the nose, cheek and forehead that redeemed its strangeness.
'What happened to him?' Chalat muttered to the face, ignoring the foreigner's presence. 'These regimental tattoos mark him as Charr's bodyguard, but-' The white-eye's voice tailed off as he gestured over the body. 'Has the same happened to Charr?'
The being in the ground rose up a little further so that the tops of its shoulders were now protruding from the rock. There was no seam between the being and the stone floor; they were made of the same substance. Mihn stared at the Ralebrat – the earth elementals were known to be allies of the Chetse, but he had never heard of them being seen outside of battle.
'Your Krann is dead. Something else possesses his body now.' There was a smooth quality to the Ralebrat's voice, sand running over stone. Something underneath the corpse reached up to tap one of the horns. The nearly decapitated head twitched under the movement as the elemental cocked its head to one side.
'I couldn't sense it as it attacked,' Chalat said. 'If more than a handful have been changed, I cannot kill them. Can your kind help?'
'We dare not. The Gods are at play, and others. We will not be involved this time.'
Chalat seemed to take the refusal with remarkable calm. The Ralebrat had allied themselves with Aryn Bwr during the Great War – clearly the slaughter on both sides had taught them to keep clear of anything similar.
'You must leave.'
'What?' Chalat was surprised.
'You cannot fight these daemons; you must leave for the sake of your people. We have expected this Age for a thousand years – we will go deep into the earth until we are called by one who is known to us.'
'How can I leave Charr to rule the Chetse?'
'You cannot avoid it. The only question is whether you will be alive when the time comes to save your people.' An arm appeared from the ground, rising up as though from a perfectly still lake. It pointed at the foreigner. 'Take that one with you.'
'Him? Why?'
The Ralebrat emitted a sound like sand brushing over steel; it was amused. 'Fate intervened to put him in your enemy's path. He is marked, that one.'
'Marked for what?'
'For suffering and service. What he has lost from his soul, he must confront and surpass. If he does as he must, his name will be honoured for a thousand years.'
'I don't understand.' Chalat now stared at the foreigner in curiosity and fascination.
'It is not yours to understand. He belongs to another.' With that the Ralebrat slid back down into the ground, disappearing without trace.
Chalat stared at the blank stone for a moment, then a gust of wind tugged at his hair and stirred him to movement. He stood up and cleaned his sword on the clothes of the dead bodyguard.
'It looks like we both have some long years ahead of us. If you're not my business, I don't want to know any more. I know the Ralebrat well enough to keep my silence. How badly injured is Chate?'
The foreigner looked down and shrugged. The man had passed out and he pushed back the man's thinning silver hair to show Chalat a ripe swelling visible on the general's hairline.
'Right, then. I'll carry him to the Temple of Asenn; they'll be around soon for the dew rituals and it's next to the Temple of Shijhe. Then we go north.'
CHAPTER 17
Koezh Vukotic watched the beacons on the walls struggle against the unremitting wind. The flames sent faint shadows cavorting over the glistening cobbles of Daraban's streets, but they made little inroad into the coating of liquid darkness that had descended upon his city. Bulging clouds obscured his sight of the moons; he preferred it that way, without Alterr's watching eye.
But the shouts and calls out there, the clank of iron and drum of hooves, they were all sounds of another life, aspects of a time when he had been truly alive. The long years of his curse were an indistinct ache, quite separate from the sharp years of mortal life; as few as they had been. Though they were mere seconds compared to the long years that followed, their light still burned fiercely.
Out there, men preparing to die thought of their wives, their children. They smiled over those years that had been their span, hoping, praying, for a few more, however cold and harsh life might be in the Forbidden Lands.