And nothing else. As they continued to move toward the creature, the arrows did not fly and the hisses did not turn to war cries. They were merely being herded for the moment. Lenk remained tense; herd led to slaughter, eventually.
The creature at the foot of the stairs continued to stare, heedless of the Shen behind them or the Shen appearing around it. Against its fellows, this one, in its dirty cloak and hood, looked positively puny, something old and bony that would probably be made into some piece of tribal decoration. It didn’t seem to mind, didn’t seem to care, didn’t seem to blink.
It continued to stare.
Its gaze, duller, darker, like petrified amber, drew Lenk’s attention. So much so that he narrowly missed the figure moving forward to stand before him. It was more than a little difficult to miss the giant, tooth-studded club that flashed into view.
He took a step back as Shalake moved to impose himself between the ancient creature and Lenk, his sword leaping to his hand and raised before him. Shalake made no move to respond, his massive club resting easily in his hand, staring from his skull headdress. Slowly, his free claw went to the ornament of bone, prying it free to reveal a face scarred by black warpaint and old injuries.
Lenk held himself, but the sheer contempt that radiated from the lizardman was more palpable than any he had felt before.
Almost any, anyway.
A red hand reached down and took his wrist in its grip. He looked up to the tremendous creature standing beside him, taken aback only for as long as it took him to recall that the black eyes staring down at him were ones he knew.
“Gariath,” he gasped. “We thought you. .”
The dragonman snorted. “Thought I what?”
“I was going to accuse you of something, but lately I’m never quite sure what the hell you’re doing.”
“At the moment,” Shalake rumbled, hefting his club, “he is stopping you from killing yourselves.”
“Merely slowing us down,” Kataria snapped back. “We’ll kill ourselves when we damn well feel like it and there’s nothing you can do about it.” She raised her bow, aiming the arrow between Shalake’s eyes. “You can come with us, if you want.”
Another bowstring creaked as a Shen, slighter and lankier than the rest, moved protectively beside Shalake, bow in hand. A single yellow eye burned hatefully upon Kataria, the other one, a ruined hole of black flesh in his skull, merely smoldered.
“Yaike remembers you,” Shalake noted with a glance toward the creature. “He says you took his eye.”
She smiled broadly, taking care to show each and every tooth.
“What I did to his eye goes a little beyond ‘taking.’”
She snapped her teeth together, the sound of her canines clacking short and vicious. Yaike snarled, the bowstring tensing even further.
“If we wanted to kill you,” Shalake said, “we would have done it back in the coral forest.”
“Or in the chasm,” Gariath grunted.
“Or when you were crawling out of the chasm,” Shalake said, nodding. “That would have been a good time.”
“If it would spare me this posturing, I’d welcome it,” Lenk said, rubbing his eyes. “But somehow, I find myself surrounded by lizardmen who are suddenly not so eager to kill me.” He turned to Gariath. “And you’re with them, apparently not killing them.” He looked back, over the island. “And I’m here following a gorge full of tentacles and dead girls to a desert ringed by big, dead, stone demon queens looking for a book to keep said demon queen from being less dead and less stone and less spilling me open and eating my insides like she said she was going to the last time she started talking to me inside my head.”
He paused for breath. It was long and slow. When he looked back up, every eye-black, green, and yellow-was fixed upon him in varying degrees of confusion.
“It has been a long, confusing, stupid day.” He threw his arms out wide, turned around to face the lizardmen surrounding him. “So, will someone either kill me right now or tell me what the hell is going on?”
No arrow through the chest, no blade hacking his head off. No one was going to kill him. So much for things being easy.
Instead, they parted. Shalake stepped aside. Yaike retreated. The Shen moved away. Even Kataria took a step back as the creature, nearly forgotten, stood up.
Bones groaned with the sound of stone cracking. An ancient layer of dust fell from the creature’s shoulders as it rose. There was a symphony of sickening snapping, cracking, popping sounds as it stepped from the stone staircase and came to stand before Lenk, staring up at the young man.
He caught a flash of what lurked beneath the creature’s cowl. A glimpse of skin veined by wrinkles that had grown so deep as to become rents in faded green flesh. A flash of white bone where skin had fallen away above brow and beneath jaw. A hint of teeth rotted to black, gums rotted to blacker, tongue a dead thing rolling about inside a mouth full of dust.
Just a glimpse.
More than enough.
“You,” the creature said with a voice of old stone and old dirt, “have been looking for me.”
“I assure you, I haven’t,” Lenk replied, unable to look on any part of the creature’s face for long and yet unable to look away.
“You came to Jaga,” he said, a cloud of dust with each word, “looking for something. You came to Jaga because you were called. You came to Jaga because you are needed here.”
“Well, which is it?” Lenk asked.
“You will tell me, soon,” the creature said. A hand slipped into the folds of his robes. It emerged carrying something so old and tarnished it looked like it belonged on. . something like the creature that held it. “But first, I must tell you.” He held the object up. “You know this symbol?”
He did. It had been a while, but he recognized it. A gauntlet clenching thirteen black arrows.
“I suppose I have been looking for you, then,” Lenk said, “Mister. .”
“Mahalar,” the creature finished for him. “Warden of Ulbecetonth. Protector of Jaga. Member of the House of the Vanquishing Trinity.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Elsewhere and far away.
Somewhere far beneath his feet and behind his brow, burning like a fever.
In the tremble of his hands upon his lap, in the tremble of his eyes as he closed them, in the sharpness of the air as he drew in a breath and held it in his throat.
He could feel it.
They were out there.
And they were speaking. They were speaking to him.
“You are listening to me, aren’t you?” someone asked from behind.
He narrowed his eyes. Not them. They weren’t important.
“Your silence does nothing to bolster my confidence,” Yldus said, sighing. “Nor does your. . change of wardrobe.”
Sheraptus held up a hand with some difficulty. The withered limb beneath the sleeve, its muscle and bone eaten away by that. . that woman’s touch, he had taken care to hide behind a new robe. Something as bright as this world’s sun-kissed skies to stand out against the darkness surrounding him.
Those who walked upon the clouds beside the sun would look down and see him glorious on the stain of this world. They would know him. They would tell him everything.
“If you refuse to consult with us on our strategy, I must once again voice my opposition to this.”
If other people would just stop talking. .
“We can find our way through the mist well enough, but beyond that, we know nothing. No warriors have ever returned from this island. A dedicated scouting force supported by a male and a few Carnassials could-”
“Could return with infection, disease, anything but information,” Vashnear interrupted. His sneer was audible. Such an ugly thing, so typical of a netherling. “Better to come with all our power and destroy them in one fell swoop that we may take our leisure and precaution in exploring their filthy holds. That would give us more ample time to locate the demons and-”