"Are we heading down the right tunnel?" Daylan called.
"Yes," Talon shouted back. Her voice sounded stressed, frightened. She realized that from the time they had entered the labyrinth, almost no one had spoken.
Suddenly the corridor ahead darkened and a great red shadow filled the hallway. Talon saw wings rise up, and realized that a Knight Eternal stood before them, barring the way.
There was a nervous cry of warning from Rhianna. She raised her sunstone and squeezed it so that it sent out a piercing light. The Knight Eternal squinted a bit, then swiftly raised a hand.
The sunstone flared impossibly bright. A whirling torrent of fire went streaming out from it into the Knight Eternal s hand, and the sunstone shattered in Rhianna s fingers. Fragments went scattering like hot sparks across the stone floor.
"It s Vulgnash himself!" Daylan shouted, and Talon felt her bowels quiver.
The Cormar twins cried out in anticipation, like dogs eager to attack. But their perfectly choreographed moves ceased. In their haste, one of them stumbled.
They re fighting each other for control, Talon realized.
The stumbler regained his feet, and the two bounded forward; one swung low while the other went high. But their movements seemed slow, jerky, uncoordinated.
In a heartbeat Vulgnash leapt and ducked at the same instant. He did not seem faster than them. Indeed, he barely seemed to escape alive.
Then he went on the attack.
His own black blade swung and lunged and swung again with such ferocity that the Cormars were driven back. He pressed the attack, rushing forward, and in the dim light had some advantage.
He has endowments to match our own, Talon realized, maybe even more.
Out of the darkness at Vulgnash s back, specters appeared-a pair of shadows clothed in the ragged black robes of Death Lords.
The air suddenly chilled, the temperature dropping and becoming numbingly cold. The air fogged from Talon s mouth. Then the Death Lords shed their robes. They became indistinct shadows in the darkness.
No mortal blade could kill a Death Lord. Their very touch would freeze a man s soul, leaving him paralyzed.
The Cormars fought to fend off Vulgnash s ferocious assault, but the very sight of the Death Lords unmanned them. Vulgnash swung mightily. One Cormar tried to block with his ax, but Vulgnash s great sword landed with such ferocity that there was a snap.
Tun Cormar s arm shattered.
Instantly Vulgnash leapt, his wings flapping once, so that he flew over the young man s head-and kicked, sending Tun into the wall.
Tun s head hit with a smashing sound, and he began to slump to the ground, leaving a bloody red streak.
No endowments of brawn could save his bones from such abuse.
His brother Errant cried out in anguish, and leapt at Vulgnash s back, arms flailing in an unrestrained attack.
Tun is dead, Talon realized. His brother feels the loss of a Dedicate.
But the Knight Eternal ducked beneath Errant s blow, stepped backward, and clubbed the young warrior with an elbow.
Errant Cormar was thrown backward-into the arms of the Death Lords.
They took him, black shadows clawing at his face greedily as they consumed his spirit.
Errant s scream rent the air, and he kicked in vain.
Talon could not see what happened next, for Vulgnash raised his wings high, so that they spanned the entire corridor. He lifted his sword in salute, inviting the next challenger.
Something s wrong here, Talon realized. Vulgnash is toying with us.
She wondered if he had more endowments than it seemed.
"Run!" Daylan cried. "To the right!"
There was a doorway to their right, just behind Talon, a large corridor with an arched roof. Talon was rearguard, so she whirled and raced down the corridor with only glow worms to light her way.
She did not like the smell of the room ahead. It tasted of blood and putrefaction, like a slaughterhouse.
The emir was at her back. He reached into his own pouch and grabbed his sunstone, held it up and pinched it. The sunstone flared into light.
They were standing in a huge room, circular in shape. There were high walls all around them, twenty feet perhaps. And above those walls were seats.
We re in a coliseum, Talon realized, a place for blood sports.
"Welcome," a man called out, "to the Arena of the Great Wyrm."
Talon halted, heart hammering, and saw a man standing before them in fine robes at the very center of the ring. At his side stood a dark creature, hairy and winged. Talon had never seen such, but she recognized it from her mother s description. It was a Darkling Glory.
Behind the man, a pair of burly guards were holding the wyrmling girl, Kirissa.
"Areth," a voice cried at Talon s back. "Areth Sul Urstone!" The Emir Tuul Ra sprang forward, confusion thick in his voice, as if he wanted to embrace his old friend but suspected that he should flee.
"Areth Sul Urstone no longer exists," the swordsman said. "I am the master of this house. I am the king of the Shattered Earth. I am the Great Wyrm that haunts your nightmares. I am Lord Despair."
At their back, Talon could hear heavy feet. Vulgnash and the Death Lords had stepped in to block the company s escape.
The emir looked crushed, confused. He staggered forward, as if he might embrace Areth.
But Daylan warned him back. "Hold, my friend. This is not the Areth that you so loved."
"Areth!" the emir shouted in a near panic. "Resist him. You can resist evil. Resist it, and it will flee from you!"
Despair laughed. "No, there is not much left of him in here. What remains is hardly aware. Like a mouse stung by the venom of a scorpion, he is torpid. Yes, that is it, a mouse. He is a mouse hiding in my skull, a frightened mouse shivering in the recesses of my consciousness, dreaming of escape. He cannot resist me."
"But, Areth," the emir cried, "we re here to rescue you."
"Too late," Despair said. "You should have come years ago, fourteen years ago. You could have offered ransoms. You could have fought valiantly."
"There is no coin that we could have paid with," the Emir objected. "There is no chance that we could have won."
"Ah," Lord Despair said, "that is where you are wrong. You could have fought. It is true that you would have died, and Areth would have been saddened for a moment. But he would have also been comforted by the depth of your love. The knowledge of what you had sacrificed might even have steeled him, so that he could endure all of our torments. But alas, we ll never know. All he felt for you in the end was hurt and betrayal."
"That s a lie," the emir said. "Areth knew that I loved him as a brother. I would have come for him years ago. I would have come and died. But the wyrmlings would have destroyed our people in the backlash. Areth knows that, too, I am sure. And he would have suffered for an eternity rather than see that."
The smile the crept across Lord Despair s face was terrible to see. It was cruel beyond torture, and it mocked all who beheld it.
"He held on to such noble sentiments for as long as he could," Despair said. "But here in Rugassa, we have perfected torment, and in the end, pain drove all such thoughts from his mind."
The Emir Tuul Ra attacked then; with a cry of anguish he drew his blade and lunged. Talon felt sure that it was a last desperate attempt to rescue Areth Sul Urstone, to free his soul, to save him from what he had become.
With the strength of a Runelord, the emir leapt thirty feet, blinding in his speed.
But Despair blurred into motion himself, easily batting aside the emir s weapon, and then landed a crushing blow with the butt of a dagger to the emir s head.
The emir fell to the ground with a crash, his sword clanging to the arena floor, then ringing as it spun away.