She slashed a third priestess to the floor with her right hand even as her left sword darted out to engage and parry yet another dagger. She twisted between two opponents, killing one and wounding the other as she passed, and then she was behind them all and spun on her toes like a dancer to charge once more.
"Tomanâk!"
Her foes seemed less eager to engage her this time, and she smiled like a direcat, teeth white through the blood on her face, as she slammed into them once more. Two more priestesses went down, then another, and finally Kaeritha heard alarm bells ringing throughout the temple complex.
Her jaw tightened. She had no doubt at all that the Voice and Paratha had drawn upon their patron's power to make certain Quaysar's guard force was loyal to them, whether or not those guards knew what they truly served. And even if there'd been no tampering at all, any guardsman who entered this audience chamber and saw the Voice and half a dozen or more of her priestesses dead on the floor was unlikely to assume that the person who'd killed them was the intended victim of an ambush by the Dark. She had no more than seconds before a veritable flood of guardsmen and war maids came pouring in upon her, and her swords flashed like lethal scythes as she slashed her way through the dagger-armed priestesses towards Major Kharlan.
The bodies between them flew aside, screaming or already dead, and Paratha was no longer falling back. The major still declined to rush forward, watching with no more apparent emotion than a serpent as her allies fell like so much dead meat before Kaeritha's blades. But she made no effort to flee, either, and as Kaeritha looked at her, she Saw something she'd never Seen before.
A cable of vile yellow-green energy linked Paratha to the corpse of the false Voice, and even as Kaeritha watched, something flowed along that cable. Something coming from the dead Voice to the living Paratha. And there were other cables, reaching out to the fallen priestesses, as well. The web of sickening luminescence centered on Paratha, sucking greedily at whatever flowed along it. Kaeritha didn't know what it was, but the corona which had clung to Paratha from the outset suddenly blazed up, fierce and bright as a forest fire to Kaeritha's Vision. And as it did, Kaeritha knew at last which of the Dark Gods she faced, for a huge, hideous spider wrapped in flame arose behind Paratha.
The spider of Shigū, Queen of Hell and Mother of Madness. Wife of Phrobus and mother of all his dark children. Far more powerful than her son Sharnā , with a foul and twisted malice none of her offspring could equal, and Lillinara's most bitter enemy for the way in which her parody of womanhood perverted and fouled all that Lillinara stood for.
Chapter Forty-Five
The flame-wrapped spider towered up, compound eyes ablaze with hatred and madness. Its mandibles clashed, dripping with venom that flamed and hissed, bubbling on the polished stone floor as it burned its way into it. Claws scraped and grated, and the vilest stench Kaeritha had ever imagined filled the audience chamber. The hideous apparition loomed over her, reaching for her with more than mere claws and pincers, and a black tide of terror lapped out before it.
Even as Kaeritha recognized the spider, Paratha seemed to grow taller. The false Voice hadn't been Shigū's true tool, Kaeritha realized; Paratha had. The Voice might even have believed that she was Shigū's chosen, but in truth, it had always been Paratha, and now the major no longer hid behind the camouflage of the Voice. She was drinking in the life energy-probably even the very souls-of her fallen followers, and something more was coming with it. Potent as all that energy might be, it was only a focus, a burning glass which reached out for something even stronger and more vile and focused it all upon the major.
Paratha's face was transfigured, and her entire body seemed to quiver and vibrate as Shigū poured energy into her chosen. Kaeritha remembered Bahzell's description of the night he'd faced an avatar of Sharnā , and she knew this was worse. Harnak of Navahk had carried a cursed blade which had served as Sharnā 's key to the universe of mortals. Paratha carried no key; she was the key, and Kaeritha's mind cringed away from the insane risk Shigū had chosen to run.
No wonder she'd been able to penetrate Lillinara's church, tamper with scores of people in Kalatha, and kill Lillinara's priestesses and Voices and replace them with her own tools! For all the endless ages since Phrobus' fall into evil, no god of Dark or Light had dared to contend openly with one of his or her divine enemies on the mortal plane. They were simply too powerful. If they clashed directly, they might all too easily destroy the very universe for whose dominion they contended. And so there were limits, checks set upon their power and how they might intervene in the world of mortals. It was why there were champions of Light and their Dark equivalents.
Yet Shigū had intervened directly. She'd moved beyond the agreed upon limits and stepped fully into the world of mortals. Paratha was no champion. She was Shigū's focus, her anchor in this universe. She wasn't touched by the power of Shigū-in that moment, she was the power of Shigū, and Kaeritha felt a terrifying surge of answering power pouring into her from Tomanâk.
"So, little champion," Paratha hissed. "You would contend with Me, would you?"
She laughed, and the web of her power reached out to her living minions, as well as the dead. Kaeritha heard their shrieks of agony-agony mingled with a horrible, defiled ecstasy-as Shigū's avatar seized them. They didn't die, not right away, but that was no mercy. Instead, they became secondary nodes of the web centered upon Paratha. They blazed like human torches to Kaeritha's Sight as the same power crashed through them, and the will which animated Paratha-a will Kaeritha realized was no longer mortal, if it ever had been-fastened upon them like pincers. All nine of the remaining priestesses moved as one, closing in to form a deadly circle about Kaeritha with Paratha.
"So tasty your soul will be," Paratha crooned. "I'll treasure it like fine brandy."
"I think not," Kaeritha told her, and Paratha's eyes flickered as she heard another timbre in Kaeritha's soprano. A deeper timbre, like the basso rumble of cavalry gathering speed for a charge. The blue corona flickering around Kaeritha blazed higher and hotter, towering over her as the luminously translucent form of Tomanâk Orfro, God of War and Justice, Captain General of the Gods of Light, took form to confront the spider of Shigū. The priestesses caught up in Shigū's web froze, as if stilled by some wizard's spell, but although Paratha drew back ever so slightly, her hesitation was only brief and her mouth twisted like the snarl of some rabid beast.
"Not this time, Scale Balancer," she-or someone else, using her voice-hissed venomously. "This one is mine!"
Her body tensed, and, on the last word, a deadly blast of power ripped from her. It screamed across the audience chamber like a battering ram of yellow-green hunger, and the entire temple seemed to quiver on its foundations as it slammed into Kaeritha. Or, rather, into the blue nimbus blazing about her. The nimbus which deflected its deadly strength in a score of shattered streamers of vicious lightning that cracked and flared like whips of flame. Small explosions laced the chamber's walls, shattered fountains, and incinerated two of the living priestesses where they stood, and Kaeritha felt the staggering violence of the impact in her very bones. But that was all she felt, and she smiled thinly at her foe.
"Yours, am I?" she asked, and a strange sense of duality swept through her on the tide of Tomanâk's presence. "I think not," she repeated, and Paratha's face twisted in mingled fury and disbelief as Tomanâk's power shed the fury of her attack.