Bresado’s eyes rolled slowly toward him, as if reading his thoughts. Like a mouse before a serpent, Kian could only look back. During Bresado’s long, unflinching study, which had grown as blank as the boy’s had been, he sucked at the stumps of his teeth, making a squelching sound. “We often hope for things that cannot be, isn’t that so, Kian Valara?” He spoke the name like a curse.
“I suppose all men do,” Kian answered, caught off guard by the odd question, his voice sounding distant and hollow to his ears.
Bresado leaned forward, belly oozing over the wide leather belt girding his befouled robe. His head turned this way and that, as if he were looking for something lurking beyond the light. “I know what you hope for, Kian Valara, and all men like you … men who are so sure of themselves and their strengths. But you will never gain what you seek.”
“What is it that you think I seek?” Kian asked distractedly, a sense of danger and alarm building in him. Although he knew it was past time to leave and ride for Izutar, and be shut of Aradan and whatever curse had befallen these lands, he could not seem to make his body do what it desired.
“You seek to supplant the master of the mahk’lar, the Life Giver! But you will die. Fortress El’hadar, the first home of the Fallen, will be your crypt.”
“I know of no one named the Life Giver,” Kian said. “Of demons, I leave them to Peropis, the demon whore of the Thousand Hells.”
Bresado’s eyes flared and he lurched out of the chair with an explosive grunt. “You dare speak so of the Queen of Geh’shinnom’atar?” he hissed, even as his huge hands grasped the table’s edge. With far more strength than his flaccid body suggested was possible, he sent the massive furnishing flying to its side with a thunderous boom. Oil lamps exploded against the floor and burst into a whooshing roar of flame. Still frozen, Kian watched the inlaid boar’s ruby eye shoot out and bounce into the shadows beyond the light, leaving behind a small dead socket in the wood.
“You will die!” Bresado said. In an impossible show of strength, he bent and lifted the massive table up over his head.
Roused by sudden alarm, Kian’s sword came into his hand. He began moving away even as Bresado hurled the table at the trio. Freed now from invisible bonds, Kian scrambled to one side, his boots slipping on the slimed floor. The table smashed down and the old wood burst apart in a shower of splinters.
“Rats will dance among your bones!” Bresado raged.
Kian was preparing to attack the man when Azuri shouted a warning. Frantically looking around, Kian felt his bowels go to water. The darkness beyond the torches had come alive with indistinct shapes, all writhing and lurching toward the light.
“Come, my children,” Bresado invited, “and take your fill.” He looked as if he had more to say, but at that moment his skull cracked apart, disgorging a flood of grave worms and a gush of something like boiling pitch. From that horror, something else struggled to get free-
“Run!” Kian ordered.
The trio had not sprinted half the distance back to the stairwell when the creeping darkness on either side of them spilled into the light. Forced into a tight, three-sided formation, Kian and the others pressed forward against a host of creatures no larger than children. But these were not children, they were living nightmares born of Geh’shinnom’atar.
Kian swallowed as an abrupt understanding flooded his mind. He had thought something strange about the scenes of death in and around the fortress, and now he knew what it was. All of the dead had been grown men and women. Save the boy who had guided them, he had seen no children among the corpses. And the reason gathered around him. The demons of Geh’shinnom’atar, the mahk’lar, had taken the bodies of El’hadar’s children for their own, twisting them into horrors.
The demons scrambled forward, long talons scraping over the stone floor. Focusing on the nearest one, Kian’s sword arced down, cleaving deep into a wedge-shaped, spine-crested head. Where steel struck, a faint spark of blue fire burst forth. An instant later, black flesh parted, releasing a smoky plume. The demon’s mouth gaped wide in a chittering howl, showing a deadly collection of obsidian fangs. Three-fingered taloned hands rose up on crooked arms, and the mahk’lar fought to rip the blade free. Kian wrenched his weapon loose and quickly slashed out with a sidearm blow to the demon’s neck. Before hitting the floor, the body and the severed head began melting, but an inky shape within escaped and blew apart to flutter in the air like a collection of black, vaporous moths.
Everything became a blur of chaotic motion, even as a bedlam of human shouts and demonic howls filled the chamber’s vast gloom. Kian and the others slashed and stabbed wildly at every shape that barred their way, steadily driving toward the stairwell, which would be more readily defensible-if it were clear. As the battle raged, Kian felt a queer sort of pressure filling him, seeking release. He did not know what that pressure was anymore than he understood the tiny flares of bluish fire that sprang from his fingers to the hilt of his sword and raced down the edge of his deadly steel.
Talons raked across his chest, leaving searing furrows, and he pushed aside all thought, save staying alive.
Somewhere nearby, Azuri screamed.
Desperate to help his friend, Kian violently hacked at another monstrous face before him, barely registering that the demon’s eyes shone like dull silver coins in the faltering light. One eye winked out under his assault, then he drew back and stabbed the other glowing orb. A brutal kick sent the dissolving creature rolling. With the briefest respite, he wheeled, searching for Azuri.
The mercenary lay face down on the floor, thrashing about in a bid to dislodge a mahk’lar from his back. Hazad stood over him, entangled by another demon, swinging his blade like a man warding off angry bees. Ducking Hazad’s frantic swings, Kian grabbed at the freakish thing on Azuri just before it could bury its long teeth into his neck. Its flesh felt cold and dead, and his fingers sank deep into the spongy meat of its shoulder-but not as deep as his blade sank into its midsection. The sword pierced ribs and burst out the other side. As all the others before it, the creature did not bleed, but rather melted, loosing putrescence and puffs of soot.
Leaving Azuri to get up on his own, Kian caught hold of the skull spines on the demon trying to devour Hazad’s face. With all his strength, he wrenched its head back. Hazad recovered quickly, brought his sword up, and rammed the edge against his assailant’s neck-the vicious attack barely scored the black skin. The wound, slight though it was, was enough to release the smoky substance beneath. With an oath, Kian hurled the thing away before it could dissolve in his hands.
And so they fought, every step as grueling as sprinting a mile up the face of a mountain. While Azuri and Hazad’s blows did not so easily dispatch their foes as did Kian’s, they were not ineffectual. It flashed through Kian’s mind that the same had been true during the fight with the demon that had taken Fenahk. There was no time to consider this however, for to turn his mind from the struggle would mean his death.
At long last, they reached the blessedly empty stairwell. Kian did not hesitate to shove Azuri and Hazad ahead of him. “Run, both of you!”
“You cannot fight them alone,” Hazad retorted, but Kian pushed him off.
“There is barely enough room for one of us to fight, let alone three. GO!”