The jewel bearer stepped through the oblong opening into a passage that had lain hidden for a hundred centuries and more. Heads bowed, twinned hearts pounding with religious rapture, the faithful followed him into the dark – into the Dark. No light penetrated the downward-winding tunnel. The noonday light outside seemed incapable of crossing the threshold of the secret passage. But the giant diamond carried by the leader provided enough dark illumination of its own to guide its bearer and his twelve followers.
Downward, ever downward they trudged. Darkness deepened, became tangible. No fear touched their hearts. The Dark was their element. They drew comfort and strength from it. The expectation of a great gift grew among the faithful.
They came to a door. It was twice as tall as a man, made of oak and bound with brass that showed no tarnish, no sign of the ages that had washed over this door like a flowing stream. All was illusion: the door was not wood and brass. It was wrought of a substance no mortal could work or even alter. The physical aspect given to a binding force of incredible power, it defied any other power in the world.
Any other but one. And the source of that power was only lately rediscovered.
The twelve threw themselves to their knees. The thirteenth raised the smoking jewel above his head and began a reptilian hissing, a triumphant chant.
In the bosom of the Dark a Demon slept, as it had for ten millennia. Hatred and despair washed over one another in an endless ebon swirl. But lately the Demon's dreams were shot through with bright threads of hope. Presences long unfelt had drawn near, uttering soft words, seductive words, promising that which the sleeping Demon desired above all things: freedom.
Or had that been another fragment of dream, the mind of the sleeper taunting itself with a hope it knew must remain unconsum-mated?
The nebulous awareness of the being existed without volition, could not summon events into focus or bring back recollections. It had no tests of truth or falsity. Still, the memories of newborn promise carried a sharpness, an appealing immediacy, that set them apart from the vagueness of dreaming. Like the memories of soft white flesh, and pain, and pleasure…
Something tickled the Sleeper's mind. It stirred within its womb, within the stone that imprisoned its limbs as the old enchantment fettered its mind. For a long moment the Sleeper believed it was just another taunti ng shard of dream. Or did it hear once more the voices of those who had worshipped it in the days of glory, lost so long ago?
It sensed presences. As the words of the Song of Awakening came to it, a pulsation of power ran through the Sleeper's body and mind. The Demon's consciousness began to swim upward through the clouds that had lain so long on it. Many times in eons past it had attempted this crazy hegira. But now it felt the singing certainty that this time would be different.
'Well met, cousin,' Synalon called cheerfully as she circled Nightwind in to a landing on the rounded hilltop. Prince Rann looked up from contemplating his warbird's corpse. The fallen eagle was a twin to Synalon's save that it bore a blazing scarlet crest. It lay spread out on the hillside before him, the butt of a Zr'gsz javelin protruding from beneath one wing.
'Rather absurd of you to say so, isn't it?' he asked, rubbing at the gingery stubble on his chin. He noticed her nakedness then, and looked away, blushing.
She laughed and jumped down from Nightwind's back. The eagle spread its wings above the corpse of its nest brother and uttered a single desolate cry.
'A pity about the bird,' the princess said. 'He was such a noble creature.' Still looking away from her, Rann nodded. 'I suppose it's reassuring,' he finally said. 'How do you mean?' 'To know that I can feel remorse over the death of a friend.'
Laughing easily, Synalon sat beside him. The warmth of her body washed over him. He began to fidget. He was a small, intense man who seemed put together of wire and spring steel. His eyes and swept-back hair were tawny, his face displaying the same haughty, almost ascetically classic sculpting as Synalon's. The perfection of his features was marred by a tiny network of white knife scars stretched over the skin like a mask. The nearness and nudity of his cousin was for him as exquisite a torture as any he might devise for victims of his sadism.
'You're turning soft,' she taunted him. Then, as mercurial as always, she switched from banter to flashing anger. 'Perhaps that's why you lost my City for me. The security of my realm lay in your hands. You let it slip!'
He jumped to his feet, glad of the chance to get away from the smell of her, the feel of her provocatively bare thigh pressing against his purple-clad leg.
'You're a fine one to talk,' he said quietly. He paced away. His scabbard flapped empty at his hip. His scimitar had plummeted to earth sheathed in the body of Darl Rhadaman, Moriana's champion. 'You fought the real battle. What happened in the air was secondary. I grant you, I failed to stop Moriana's entry into the City. But ultimately, cousin dear, it was up to you to prove your superiority in a test of wills and magic, face to face, alone.' He turned back to regard her sardonically. 'And evidently it was a battle you lost. Or else you wouldn't be in such… dishabille.' She leaped to her feet.
'Don't lecture me, half man! How can a eunuch such as you understand what I have lost this day?'
'What you have thrown away this day!' His face was taut and pale under the lattice of scars. 'With the favor of the Dark Ones, you thought, no price lay beyond your grasp. And now look what you've won. Exile to a lonely hilltop without so much as a cloak to cover your nakedness. A prize fit for a queen – or nothing!'
She smiled at him, savage and evil, raised her arms and stretched so that her heavy breasts rode lazily up her ribcage. His tongue flicked lizardlike over his lips. He turned away again.
'What will you do now, cousin?' Synalon asked silkily. 'Will you leave me on this hilltop fate has set me to rule?' His head drew down between his shoulders. 'You know I cannot do that.' For the first time in Synalon's long memory, the prince's voice was hoarse and choked with emotion. She laughed musically in delight.
'No, of course you can't abandon me. Because, while you hate me, you love me far more. And vastly more even than that, you desire me, O cousin Prince!'
Abruptly, Synalon flung forth her arm. Blue lightning coruscated from outstretched fingertips and struck Rann full in the back. He uttered a croaking cry and fell forward onto his knees, arms hugging his chest, bobbing and gasping in a paroxysm of agony.
'And because you fear me, my good and loyal Prince,' said Synalon, sneering. 'Because you fear me well.' Painfully Rann struggled to his feet.
'It would… seem that you're the one – oh! – who grows soft,' he said, enunciating each word as if a dagger twisted in his bowels at every syllable. 'Still you fail… to exact the final price of my failure.'
'I'd prefer having you available to redeem yourself,' she said in a matter-of-fact tone. 'You are adroit, for all that your recent efforts have not exactly been crowned with success. And you're a tough bastard, Rann. A normal man would at this moment be lying before me unconscious or dead from the bolt I gave you.'
Turning, Rann gradually forced himself to uncurl and stand upright before his cousin. He felt like he was stretched on the rack. He forced his lips to smile.
'A normal man, perhaps, but not a half man, eh?' He shook himself as though throwing off the last of the pain the lightning had left. 'What now, cousin?'