And so, instead of claiming it for himself, he’d used it, and the result hovered in the darkness about him. He felt the coursers’ souls, reclaimed—however briefly—from the creatures who had slain them, screaming silently. They had tasted what awaited them, and the horror of that taste swirled through them like a cyclone of terror. And that was good, for their fear, their effort to escape the hideous dissolution awaiting them, only made it easier for him to manipulate their essences. They were his focuses, the anchors of the glittering web he’d woven, and his smile was ugly in the darkness. It would make their despair complete, and the taste of their broken life energy so much sweeter, when they realized that it had been they—their souls, and the power stolen from them—which had trapped and destroyed one of Tomanak’s hated champions.
“Go to Haliku and Layantha,” he told Treharm now. “Tell them both that our enemies will be here within the hour. And tell Layantha to join me here … and that when the time is right, she will have what she requires.
“We’re after being close now.”
Bahzell’s voice was low as his companions—hradani, human, and courser alike—gathered about him and Walsharno. He sensed their tension, their dread of what awaited them. But he also tasted their grim determination and their hatred for the evil they’d come to find.
“How can you tell?” It was Battlehorn. Even now he sounded sullen, resentful, yet the question was genuine, not a challenge or statement of skepticism.
“It’s a sense Himself is after giving his champions,” Bahzell replied levelly, answering the question with the honesty it deserved. “It’s not something as I can be putting neatly into words, but I’m after sensing the presence of the Dark much as you’d see a cloud against the sun. And what it is that’s waiting up ahead there is after being the very stormfront of Krahana herself.”
Muscles tightened, and jaws clenched, but no one looked away.
“What is it you want us to do?” Kelthys asked simply.
“It’s little I know of exactly what we’ll be facing,” Bahzell said grimly, “but this much I do know. There’s after being two battles waiting for us—one as will attack physically, with claw and fang or blade, and one as won’t be using weapons most of you will be so much as seeing. I’ve a nasty enough sense of what’s ahead to know as there won’t be anything of the mortal, natural world about it, physical or not. But anything as is solid enough to be after hurting you is solid enough that you can be hurting it. I’ll not say as how you can be killing it, but at the least, you can be after holding it in check.”
He paused for a moment, surveying his allies, then flicked his ears.
“I’ll not be lying to you. It’s in my heart and soul to wish as how you’d none of you come, beyond us of the Order, but you’d have none of it, and I knew it. And, truth to tell, I can’t but be admiring the guts as brings each and every one of you to this. You’ve made us sword brothers all, by your courage. Yet men—and coursers—are after dying in battle, brothers, and it’s in my mind as how some of us will be doing that this night.”
Dozens of eyes look back at him, levelly, despite the tension ratcheting higher and tighter behind them.
“There’s a part of this battle as will be mine to fight,” he continued. “It’s not one as any of the rest of you can be after joining. But what you can be doing is to keep the rest of whatever it is we’re facing off of me while I’ve the fighting of it. Will you be watching my back for me, brothers?”
“Aye.” It was Luthyr Battlehorn, his voice cold and hard with promise despite the dislike still showing in his eyes. “Aye, Milord Champion, we will.”
“Now, Layantha.”
Jerghar’s command was a sibilant hiss as he crouched atop his hill, and the once-woman beside him smiled a terrible smile. Layantha Peliath was something vanishingly rare among the Servants of Krahana—a mage who’d actually sought the service of the Queen of the Damned. And not just any mage, for she’d been an empath. Not a receptive empath. Most of those went into healing, either of the mind or the body, and the very nature of their talent was enough to make any fate like Layantha’s unthinkable. Had she been a receptive empath, her talent would have carried the predatory cruelty of Krahana and her Servants too clearly to her for her to have voluntarily yielded. She might have been taken by a Servant, or a shardohn, or even Krahana herself, but she would not have yielded, and so could not have become what she now was.
But Layantha had been a projective empath, able to project her own emotions, but unable to sense those of others. It was one of the mage talents of extremely limited utility, and perhaps that had been a factor in the choice she’d made. Layantha had never had the sort of personality which was prepared to accept that she was not the center of everyone’s universe as she was of her own.
She hadn’t realized in time that to accept Krahana was to become no more than one more satellite of the voracious void which she had made her mistress. The fact that she remained anything but the center of the universe was bitter poison on her tongue, but that only fanned her hatred of all still-living beings even higher. And the mage talent which had survived her surrender to Krahana was no longer a thing of limited utility.
Now, as her enemies crested the last undulating swell of the Wind Plain before their hill, she reached out to that portion of the reservoir of focused power Jerghar was prepared to make available to her, and her smile was a hideous thing to see.
A wave of sheer terror curled across the night-struck grassland like a tsunami.
Terror was no stranger to Bahzell Bahnakson. He’d faced wizards, cursed swords, and demons, and no man, however great his courage, was immune to fear. But he had never tasted a deeper terror, one with a darker core of horror … or one which had no apparent source at all.
Layantha’s tidal bore of darkness crashed over him, and he heard stricken cries and high-pitched, equine squeals as it fountained over his companions, as well. It smashed down on them, vast and noisome and more crippling than any physical wound. He sensed them behind him, and knew that the only reason they hadn’t fled was that the terror which had invaded them was so totally overwhelming that they were paralyzed. Frozen helplessly, like mesmerized rabbits waiting to be taken by a gamekeeper.
Bahzell was trapped with them, but the black river of ice which had sucked them under could not—quite—reach his core. That indomitable core of elemental hradani stubbornness, buttressed by his link to Tomanak … and to Walsharno.
He and the courser stood motionless, as frozen as any of their companions, as the night took on a hideous unlife of its own. He could see the darkness coming alive with the pustulant green sores of hundreds of glittering eyes. They came towards him, and he recognized them. Not because he’d ever seen them with his own eyes, but because Gayrfressa had seen them. Had felt the fangs and poison, and the terrible, lustful hatred which lived behind them. He had experienced Gayrfressa’s experiences as his own, and beyond that, he was a champion. The true nature of the shardohns could not hide itself from him, and so, even more than Gayrfressa, he understood what he faced and the true horror of what awaited any who fell to them.
The creatures closed in slowly, made cautious by their dread of Tomanak and his power despite the quicksand of projected terror which had frozen their enemies. And that caution was a mistake.
They should have flung themselves upon Bahzell. They should have ripped the life and soul out of him and Walsharno instantly, brutally, while Layantha held them paralyzed. But instead, they hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation, Bahzell reached deep.