"Let"s try to take this one alive," said Hogan. He picked up a lamp. "I"ll go first."
They approached the pitch black chamber that led to the stair and found nothing.
In the chambers below, something crashed, then fell silent.
Hogan began his descent, Argoth close on his heels. Argoth wanted to run, but knew that doing so would extinguish his lamp. Nevertheless, they took the second set of stairs three and four at a time, their flames guttering the whole way. At the bottom, Hogan"s lamp finally did blow out, but they hurried on. As they approached the door to the open chamber, Argoth expected to see a light, carried by whomever had broken in, but the cleansing room was dark as ink.
Purity spoke to someone inside. "What do you want?" she asked in terror.
Hogan turned and relit his lamp with Argoth"s flame, and then stepped through the doorway. He held his lamp aloft. The light showed the door to Purity"s cell lying on the stone floor. It had been wrenched completely out of its fittings. Inside the cell itself someone large hunkered over Purity while she struggled in his grasp.
The man seemed not to have heard their approach. Hogan changed his grip on the Hog and set down his lamp. But they needed more light. Argoth spotted a small pile of straw used for the cells lying in a heap to one side. He kicked a portion of it away, poured oil over it, then hurled his lamp down into the middle of it, cracking the lamp and spilling the oil.
The fire flared, illuminating the room and the back of the rough figure.
Hogan approached the cell, poised to swing the Hog. "Put her down," he commanded.
The man supported Purity with one arm and with the other fingered the King"s Collar around her neck. Her blanket had fallen to the floor to expose her injured and bandaged body. Purity pushed away from the man, but was too weak to free herself.
The huge man wore an odd cloak of gra.s.s, but then he turned, and Argoth saw it was not a man. It was nothing like anything Argoth had ever seen. The gra.s.s he"d thought was a cloak was part of the creature, some patches whole, some burned. It opened its too-wide mouth and took in a ragged breath.
"Purity," demanded Hogan. "You said there was no dark grove."
A terrible fear lit her eyes. "Run," she said. "It"s full of souls."
Hunger tried to devour Purity like he had all the others, but the thing at her neck fought him. It stunk of the men"s magic. There was the Mother"s magic, but hers was always fresh and clean. This, this was something else.
He felt along its weave to untangle it and failed, and then the word for what it was surfaced in the murky waters of his mind like a giant fish. It was a King"s Collar, something forged in the secret fires of the Kains that could prevent even a Divine from using magic. He marveled for a moment-how did he, Barg, a common butcher, know such things? He couldn"t, shouldn"t know such things, which meant that Barg wasn"t the only man he"d eaten.
He looked more closely at the collar. If such a thing could harness a Divine, it might be able to harness a Mother.
That thought made him hold very still. The Mother was sleeping and had shut him out. She didn"t know about this harness. Didn"t know about this bit of lore that might bind her.
Hope sprang in him, but he beat his thoughts back, took them deep inside so they wouldn"t wake her.
The Mother was going to eat his family. He knew that. No matter what he did, she would eat them. Perhaps in the end, she would eat him as well. But this collar, this might bind her up tight. After all, humans had beaten the Mothers before. She said so herself.
Humans with magic.
Hunger looked at the King"s Collar. He looked at the sleth woman. The Mother wanted him to bind them all and bring them to her. Why? To use them? Or because they posed a threat?
Because they posed a threat, he decided.
Hunger held very still again and listened, but the Mother was not in him. The Mother was strong. But perhaps this time, if he was quiet and planned carefully, the prey, with this slip of magic, might turn the tables and catch the predator.
Someone called out from behind him. He turned and saw two men-a Mokaddian with a sword and a Koramite with an axe. Stink rolled off both of them in waves.
Hunger recognized the Mokaddian but couldn"t put a name to him.
Then the Koramite charged and struck him with his axe.
The force of the blow knocked Hunger back a step. Such power surprised him. But it didn"t matter. Hunger was a man of dirt. What could an axe do to dirt? He caught the Koramite by the throat and held him up. He could snap him like he had the other men above.
But there would be secrets in these two slethy men as well. Plenty of secrets. Some of which might show him how to defeat the Mother. He should eat them and discover their secrets. They weren"t human. They were sleth. In fact, by all laws he should kill them. Eating them would not make him any more abominable than he already was. And it just might prevent the Mother from working her evil further.
Hunger tried to shuck the man, but he could not find a crack. It was like trying to use a spoon to peel the bark from a maple: all he could do was chip off small chunks.
He searched over the man"s body and finally snagged on the tiniest of gaps. He could feel the man"s soul inside. Could taste his fear.
Hunger tried to dig deeper, but the man resisted him. Hunger changed his attack and was resisted again. But this man wasn"t like the trees in his glade. Hunger knew he could crack him; he could feel it. He changed his attack again, and this time was able to pry the seam open to expose the man"s soul.
The Koramite struggled ferociously, but Hunger was stronger.
Something flashed, and Hunger suddenly lost his grip and dropped the Koramite to the floor.
Hunger turned. The Mokaddian had joined the fray. The flash had been his blade, cutting clean through the wrist of the arm Hunger had been holding the Koramite with. The Mokaddian swung his blade again at Hunger"s neck, but the Mother had built him solidly there, and the blade simply lodged in the rock she"d used for his bones.
Hunger drew back the stump of his arm and swatted the Mokaddian to the other side of the room. He looked down at his hand on the floor and then at his stump. The dirt in his forearm began to shift and form itself into a new ragged thing that looked not so much like a hand as it did the wild growth from a coppiced tree.
These two knew how to resist him. This meant he was going to have to kill them before he unraveled them. That was trickier than just taking them live. Trickier, but he could do it.
The Koramite backed up by the burning pile of straw. He held his useless axe ready. The Mokaddian knelt at the far wall, looking like he was trying to regain his senses.
Hunger would take the Koramite first.
Then he felt the Mother stirring, and all his attention turned back to the collar. He had to hide it quick, had to busy himself with some other task. Otherwise, she would know.
She would know. She would know!
She would command him to bring these men to her, and he would have to obey. Eventually, he would have to obey. But if she didn"t know, she couldn"t command.
Hunger turned and rushed back to Purity. He threw her over his shoulder like a sack of grain and ran for the exit. The Koramite tried to stop him, but Hunger flung the man aside. Then it was up the stairs and into the dark, back the way he"d come. He"d get out, and then he"d remove the collar before the Mother fully wakened. He"d cover it and all thought of the men. And when she fell asleep again, Hunger would come back for them and their secrets and use them to wield the collar.
Argoth watched Hogan bury the Hog deep in the creature"s leg, but it had no visible effect. The creature simply tossed Hogan to the side like he was so much straw. Then the creature rushed out of the cleansing room with Purity clutched to its chest and the Hog still buried in its leg.
Hogan struggled to his knees and winced, holding his arm close as if it were broken. "That thing just might have cracked my collar bone."
"I"ve never-" said Argoth in amazement. The power of that creature. What was it?
"I felt someone there," said Hogan. "Inside the beast."
"Who?"
Hogan shook his head. "I don"t know."
Men yelled above. There was a crash; something heavy tumbled down the upper stairway.
"They"re not going to be able stop it," said Argoth.
Hogan"s face twisted in surprise. "Lumen," he said.
"What?"
"Lumen"s soul."
Lumen, the Divine who had overseen the Nine Clans. The Divine who had gone missing last year. Is this how he had disappeared, taken by this rough creature? Or was this an experiment gone awry?
Another crash sounded from above.
Argoth raced out of the room and up the stairs. Smoke from the straw fire in the room rolled up along the ceiling, choking him. So he ran up into the darkness, crouched low to keep under the smoke. Towards the top of the first flight of stairs he almost stepped on the Hog where it must have fallen from the creature"s leg. He called back to Hogan to pick it up, then burst into the first cellar and heard the clamor of many men above.
He ran up the next flight of stairs. On his way up, he found two guards lying on the stone steps. One was dead, splayed out in a horrible pose. The other lay on his back, moaning. Argoth sprang past the men to the main floor above.
He emerged into the back room and found that the battle had moved outside where men with torches and pikes struggled and shouted. The bulk of the men surged to one side as if hit by a large wave.
He"d been able to hack off the thing"s hand. Of course, it had done as much good as chopping a worm in two. But he"d much rather face that thing in pieces. And if all they could do was dismember it, then that"s what they must do.
He charged outside. A number of the men shouted a warning and pointed at something on the wall.
Argoth turned. The thing climbed the wall like a dark, three-legged spider, shielding Purity against its chest like a mother might her newborn babe.
The half moon made silhouettes of a number of guards on the wall above. Many took aim and shot their arrows. Others threw spears.
Those would do nothing to the creature, but they could kill Purity. If this was her monster, that might dissolve its bindings. But they needed a bigger weapon.
At various points upon the wall stood seven ballista. The shafts from those machines could skewer a horse.
"The ballista!" he shouted up to the men. "Turn the ballista!"
The guards manning the one closest to the creature began to turn the war machine.
Hogan appeared at Argoth"s side with the Hog. "It"s hers, isn"t it?"
"I don"t know" asked Argoth.
"We"ll soon find out," said Hogan.
The creature moved with such speed he knew the ballista men were only going to get one shot.
"Take it when it crests the top!" Argoth shouted.
More archers arrived and the thrumming of their bows made a chorus. He could hear the ballista men on the wall cranking their engine back. One five-foot, iron-headed dart from these machines could transfix several armored men. The only weapon more powerful would be one of the war wolves, casting a ma.s.sive stone. But those would be ineffective against such a small, mobile target.
The creature neared the top.
"Lead it!" a man shouted.
The moon suddenly shone through a gap in the ragged clouds and lit up the wall. It was hideous how the thing moved, like an insect. Then it reached the top and raised itself up, its back bristling with arrows.
"Now!" Argoth shouted. "Shoot now!"
The men pulled the release lever. The ballista made a loud thwonk. The creature took one ma.s.sive step upon the wall, a dark, hulking figure, Purity"s naked form like a small pale flower held at its chest, then, in the next moment, both were swept away.
"Lords," said Hogan.
"Quickly," Argoth shouted. "To the bailey!"
By now most of the fortress guard had awakened and come to the call to arms. Torches burned in many hands. A quarter of a cohort, almost 150 men, rushed to the gate of the inner wall, Argoth and Hogan following behind. They disappeared through the tunnel, emerged in the bailey on the other side, then rushed to the spot where the creature should have fallen.
Argoth expected at any moment to hear the men in front call out that they"d found the creature, but no such shout arose. Then one soldier lifted the ma.s.sive ballista dart into the air.
"Scan the walls!" someone shouted. Men stood back to examine the face of the moonlit walls. A group of soldiers charged forward, beyond the location where the ballista dart was found.
Argoth grabbed a torch from a soldier and stepped up to examine the tip of the dart. It was clean. Not a drop of blood. Not a speck of dirt.
He looked at the ground where the dart had fallen. Nothing heavy had landed here. He looked up at the wall. He knew the soldiers searching the rest of the bailey would not find the creature. It was gone, vanished into the night just as it had come.
"Purity," he said. "What have you wrought?"
17.
Soul Meat THE DART FROM the ballista might have pa.s.sed through Hunger like stick through a pile of sand, but the Mother had created him with more than dirt. He had a skeleton of wood and stone. Of course, it was not just wood. Not simple stone. Whatever power the Mother controlled had bound him. He wasn"t just a piece of carpentry, for then the ballista dart would have shattered his chest. But it didn"t. The dart stuck in his ribs and the force of the impact threw him backwards.
But it did not throw him directly away from the wall and into the bailey. Instead, it cast him off the rampart and into the bottom wall of the h.o.a.rdings used to sweep attackers off the slopes and cliffs on the back side of the fortress. And that saved the sleth woman, for Hunger was able to keep hold of her with one hand and grasp one of the h.o.a.rding timbers and swing up underneath with the other.
Hundreds of feet below him the sea sparkled in the moonlight. The waves surged and crashed upon the rocks, spraying forth great gouts of moonlit foam. Hunger would have survived the long drop to the sea, but the sleth woman would have broken on impact.
He heard the men yelling, and he felt . . . pain? It was not sharp, but there was an echo of hurt. And then he realized it was not him, but the sleth woman. He could feel the emotions roiling inside her body, feel them like one might feel a puppy thrashing in a sack. He realized he"d always been able to feel the souls of his victims, smell those emotions. He wanted to devour her, but he couldn"t do it here. And he didn"t dare climb down the cliff, for the men would see him, and then she would die. So Hunger skittered like a spider along the belly of the h.o.a.rdings until he was on the other side of the fortress, far away from the shouting.
He laid the sleth woman onto the rock and spa.r.s.e gra.s.s that grew here. He had probed the collar down in the cellar of the tower, but could not find its clasp. It was said only a Divine could remove a King"s Collar, only they knew the lore of unbinding. But did he not have magic also? He examined the collar again. There was no break-the collar seemed to have been woven around the woman"s neck. But nothing was that perfect. He could find an opening if he searched slowly.
It seemed he had only just begun, when the Mother stirred again. Hunger bent his concentration, moving faster and faster along the loops and whirls finding nothing, nothing, nothing!
She was coming, he could feel it. Feel her fingers reaching out to his mind.
Panic rose in him. She couldn"t have it. She mustn"t have it. Then he found a spot that seemed different from the rest, but he couldn"t tell for sure if it was the spot of joining. It wasn"t a break; it was just a spot.