Lamici struggled to grasp the idea, then spoke again. "How will I find your fortress? I have never traveled so far south or east."
"I shall send my reflection again when you bear south. Bring me the talisman, and tarry not. After I destroy it, Eldran will die. This time nothing will prevent his death!"
"There is one more problem, Priestess. Conan and Kailash still live.
They escaped from the trap in the temple, and even now, they follow me."
A flicker of annoyance crossed Azora"s face. In better light, the eunuch would have also seen her momentary expression of doubt. "They must not catch you. There is little I can do to protect you from them until you are closer to my fortress. Ride swiftly! Hundreds of leagues still separate us, and you must close the distance. Keep the talisman hidden!"
The image of Azora vanished, as the moon was blocked by a thin layer of clouds drifting into the night sky. Lamici rubbed his eyes, yawned, and gathered his gear. He would reach Azora with the amulet. He would salvage his hopes with her help. No matter the cost to him, he would stay ahead of his pursuers and lead them to their doom. Laughing, he galloped eastward, leaving the two sleeping warriors many leagues behind him.
Eighteen --------.
The Sleeper in the Sand -----------------------.
Azora was levitating a few feet above the floor of the library within Skauraul"s fortress. Languidly she lowered herself to the plushly carpeted but cold floor. She sat there motionless, looking more like a figure in a painting than one in real life.
For some hours she had floated thusly, searching the ethereal spirit world for signs of Madesus"s amulet. Her body, left behind in the material world, did not inhale or exhale, nor did her crimson eyes blink even once. Her mortal sh.e.l.l had simply hovered mindlessly, serving only as a tether for the intangible cord of her spirit.
Eventually she had returned from the ethereal lands, having found what she sought.
She had learned the ways of ethereal travel from the tomes in Skauraul"s vast arcane library. There were hundreds of volumes there, filled with long-forgotten secrets of dark, sorcerous arts. Her first sight of the library had struck her with awe. It was the greatest she had ever seen, a storehouse of arcane knowledge. She had gleaned from Xim that many treasure-vaults were hidden in Skauraul"s stronghold, but these had not interested her. To her, the library"s worth was far greater than that of all the gems and gold in the fortress.
Xim had refused to accompany her into the repository. Anxious to explore the works within, she had not cared what Xim did. She had left him in the hall outside, dismissing him as she had looked over the many shelves full of ancient books, and the neatly organized racks of scrolls. The library was vast, with a ceiling over twenty feet high and every inch of wall s.p.a.ce taken up by shelves and racks. A dozen storehouses in darkest Stygia would not equal it.
The first volume she had chosen to study was Skauraul"s personal grimoire. The immense tome rested on an oddly shaped table, built entirely of human bones. Its covers had been made of beaten copper, now badly tarnished with age. The gilt-edged pages inside were thick and yellowed, but not yet crumbling. The first two thirds of the volume were tightly packed with script written in Skauraul"s spidery hand.
Thousands of words filled each expansive page, but unlike similar texts she had perused, this one contained no drawings or diagrams. The pages themselves had given off a queer glow, dim but bright enough to read by, even if the room was pitch black. Curiously, the remaining third of the book had been empty.
She had scanned through the last few pages before this empty section.
They were written in a language unknown to her. Exasperated, she had flipped back through the book until she had found a section she could read. For hours she had pored eagerly over Skauraul"s writings.
Eventually her deep thirst had been temporarily quenched, and she had decided to practice some of the arts described in the vast tome.
The most intriguing of these had been the art of ethereal travel.
Physical distances meant nothing in the strange world of the ethereal, where she could send her spirit thousands of leagues away in the wink of an eye. Carefully, she had made the incantations necessary to free her spirit from her body. At first the spell had not worked, but after repeated attempts, she had begun her journey into the dreamy, intangible realm of the ethereal.
Skauraul had written that one"s ethereal spirit could look upon events in the material world and yet remain unseen to those in that world.
Azora had decided to see what had become of the fool Madesus and the two b.u.mbling warriors in the temple, where she had laid a trap. Where she should have found their torn, gashed bodies, there had been nothing. Perturbed, she had next sought Balberoth, to see if he had utterly destroyed them. As she willed her spirit to seek him, she had been taken on a terrifying journey through the dark, chaotic layers of the abyss itself.
Balberoth"s formless spirit had been sent to a special pit in h.e.l.l, reserved for demons who are banished from the physical world. She had read of the existence of such a pit, but words had not done it justice.
The place was a mind-numbing chaosium, filled with endlessly screaming, tormented wraiths, who would writhe in impotent fury for all eternity.
Shuddering, Azora had withdrawn her spirit from the pit, back to the library.
How could Balberoth have failed? The priest Madesus had not the strength to resist a demon of the Elder Night, who was nearly as powerful as a lesser G.o.d. Shaken, Azora turned the question over in her mind, seeking an answer. Mitra himself must have intervened, for only a G.o.d had the power to banish a demon of the Elder Night. If Mitra was with Madesus, the priest posed more of a threat than she had originally thought. Determined to find him, she had reentered the ethereal world and begun searching.
Instead of finding Madesus, her spirit had located Lamici. The insane old fool was sleeping beside a road that cut through the Karpash Mountains. Azora did not understand why her spirit had been drawn to the eunuch, but she decided to enter his dreaming mind and awaken him, a fascinating technique that Skauraul had described in great detail.
When the screaming eunuch had risen, she had decided to question him.
What she had learned both gratified and confounded her. At least the priest was dead; the eunuch had stopped his heart with a deadly poison.
She had used the potion herself in the past, and knew that its effects were irreversible. By luck, the eunuch had also seized the priest"s amulet.
She was uncertain of what role the amulet had played in this affair, but she knew how dangerous the talisman was to her. It was the last magic remnant of Xuoquelos, one of the Mutare"s most bitter enemies.
She was certain that the amulet had prevented her death-spell from striking down Eldran, and perhaps it had even kept the priest safe from Balberoth.
Lamici would bring her the amulet. She dared not touch it herself, nor even look upon it, but she did know how to render it harmless. When immersed in the blood of a man with no soul, the talisman would lose its power. Lamici would serve this purpose; when she had first met him, she had begun to take his soul away. Since a man thus deprived fears nothing, she had left him a little of his soul, intending to extract all the torment she could from him when he had become useless to her.
His fear would bring him to her. Her only concern was over the two warriors. If they managed to catch the eunuch, they might use the amulet against her, or bring it to one who knew the extent of its powers. As long as Lamici kept ahead of them, she was safe. She could do nothing to the warriors when they were so far away, but soon they would come within her sphere of influence.
Without the priest or the amulet to protect them, she would easily cut them down. They could not harm her for she could not be slain by ordinary steel. She would torment and weaken them, and feed them to the spiders in the chamber far below. She had decided to keep these children of Zath as pets. Xim, however, she did not trust. She would eventually dispose of him, too, but at present, he was the least of her concerns.
Time was on her side. At full gallop, Lamici and his pursuers would not enter the Shan-e-Sorkh for a week. She would put the time to good use, to absorb Skauraul"s magical writings. She would avidly seek the most powerful of the ancient Mutare"s secrets: immortality. Of all the mages who had searched for this most precious secret, only Skauraul had ever unearthed it. The historical accords she had read told of his being vanquished before he could complete the rituals required to attain immortality. She would not suffer a similar fate; there was no one alive to stand in her way.
Returning to the bone-table and the dire volume resting upon it, Azora began reading fervently, as if in a trance. Inscribed somewhere within its copper-bound pages was the key to eternal life. She started with the first page. She would not rest until she found it.
Xim crouched outside the library"s door, waiting. Scar, the ancient master, had told him that one day the female would come.
"She will have eyes like mine," he had said. "Show her the secret way past the old ones, and take her to the top of the long stair. Follow her not into the Thalamus Arca.n.u.s! Hide yourself in the hollow above the door and await my return. So that you may show her the way when she comes, I grant you the power of speech."
When he had finished speaking, Scar had touched Xim with a long, black-nailed finger, altering the arachnid"s mind and body to give him the use of words.
Later that same day, a strange, white-haired man had come to the fortress, calling out the ancient master"s name. The man carried with him a long, silver spike. Xim remembered the master"s words as he had opened the door and gone out to confront the visitor: "The fool thinks I can be killed," Scar had muttered. "He knows not how deeply I have dug my roots. Even if his ill-conceived plan works, he cannot destroy me utterly. In a few centuries, when he is but dust in a forgotten crypt, I shall return to trouble the world again."
Scar had charged Xim to remain in the fortress"s antechamber until the female came. Without further words, the master had left the fortress and gone out into the desert to confront the white-haired man.
Through the open fortress door, Xim had impa.s.sionately watched their brief and terrible struggle. Eventually the white-haired stranger had impaled Scar upon the silver spike. As he did so, Scar"s body had simply turned to dust, which had quickly been scattered by the continually blowing desert wind. The force of the wind had increased until it had become a howling gale. The stinging sand forced the stranger to back away from the fortress; it shut the heavy stone door that Xim had been looking through. The sand storm blew about the fortress for many months, keeping away looters and curious explorers.
When the wind had died down, the fortress had been completely covered.
No trace of its existence remained.
Throughout the centuries, the ageless Xim had patiently waited for the female to arrive, faithfully keeping his sleepless vigil at the fortress"s doorway. Slowly the xanthuous dunes had shifted, lifting the sandy shroud that had draped the fortress for so long. By then, its existence was remembered only in a few dusty scrolls or seldom-read books. Some considered it mere legend, as no one living had ever claimed to have seen it.
As Azora feverishly perused Skauraul"s ancient ma.n.u.script, and Xim crept quietly into the hollow above the door, the sands outside the fortress had begun to stir again. This time there was no wind blowing them hither and thither; they swirled and moved about like swarms of tiny insects. Only a select few grains moved, all from a small, localized area. Some rose from the ground briefly, only to fall back down.
Hours pa.s.sed; the sun climbed into the cloudless desert sky, then dipped below the western horizon. With every hour that went by, more grains of sand became animated, until a small, dusty maelstrom was formed several dozen paces from the fortress"s stony door. Speck by speck, it grew. By late that following evening, it was nearly seven feet in height. Whirling and spinning, the funnel of sand twisted toward the fortress door, guided by some unseen intelligence.
It stopped when it reached the portal, stretching and changing in shape. A naked humanoid form became visible from the feet up, as if the flesh was pouring into the funnel from an invisible pitcher. Gradually the dusty granules became one with the form, and the whirling funnel of sand disappeared. Before the door of his fortress stood the most powerful Mutare in history, born anew. Skauraul"s deep, rumbling laughter echoed across the desolate steppes. Extending a hand, he pushed the heavy stone door open with ease, as if it had been a gossamer veil.
His bare feet made no sound as he walked inside, crossing the antechamber in a few powerful strides. His smooth, pale-skinned body was well muscled, and proportioned almost too perfectly. His complexion was flawless; only a keen eye could have detected faint, rounded scar-lines on his chest and the center of his back, where the silver spike had pierced him years ago. Like Azora"s, his nails and teeth were black, but his lips were white. Devoid of hair, he did not have even eyelashes or eyebrows. Eyes of solid, unfathomable black, like polished orbs of coal, surveyed the chamber.
The webs parted before him as he approached the illusory wall that served as gateway to the rooms in the fortress. He moved into the corridor, pleased to find that the old ones were still perched above the false doors, exactly as he had left them. He stepped past the false wall, into the stone pa.s.sage beyond.
High in the tower above him, Azora slumped back in her chair and looked up from the book before her. She was exhausted; days of reading had fatigued her even more than the rite of translocation to the desert had done. She had pored over the pages in a trancelike state, without feeling the exhaustion until this moment. Incredible powers were now hers, and dark secrets, too. Much of the book described excruciating methods of torture, to reap fear and anguish from hapless human victims.
She longed to put her newfound skills into practice. Soon she would send her spirit into the ethereal world to see how Lamici was faring.
Before she could attempt this, she would need to recharge her magical energies, presently at a very low ebb indeed.
From her cloak she withdrew a small bowl, made of thinly beaten metal, with strange symbols etched into its curved sides. Next, she drew out a palm-sized box, carved from the wood of a carnivorous Kalamtu tree.
Sliding its cover off, she took out a dried, pressed piece of a black lotus blossom. Placing the blossom into the bowl, she spoke a single word.
"Atmak."