Chained By Fear: 2 (25 page)

But Torg knew that summoning
undines
from the Realm of the Undead was difficult and time-consuming. Only powerful and learned beings were capable of the undertaking, which took more than a full day of undisturbed incantation. If a single step in the process were interrupted, the summons would halt their entrance. In the Realm of Life,
undines
appeared as black specks resembling tiny tadpoles, and—outside of living flesh—could survive only in cool, clear water. If a person or animal drank the water, they became infected. If enough
undines
were unleashed into the Ogha River near Senasana, the entire city could be endangered.

Torg believed he now understood
what
was happening, but he didn’t understand
why
. Turning Senasana into a city of fiends made little sense
 . . .
unless
 . . .
someone planned to unleash the newly formed monsters on nearby Nissaya?

Torg needed more information, but the girl in the white robes—probably a lowly apprentice—would not have the answers. He pressed his face against hers and breathed blue-green vapor into her mouth and nostrils.

“
Niddaayahi
,” he whispered. The girl went so limp it was as if she were pretending. Torg laid her near a hedge and covered her with fallen leaves, leaving just the tip of her nose exposed. While under the effects of the magic sleep, she probably would not awaken until the next day.

Torg left her and proceeded toward the second wall.

Soon after the wizard was gone, the girl sat up and smirked maliciously. Then her pale body twisted, shrank and blackened. In its place a raven appeared—and it fluttered into the sky, following Torg’s progress from above. It stunned Vedana how easily she had fooled the father of her latest child. However, she was disappointed to discover that the poison she had magically spewed into his flesh during their lone sexual encounter in the bowels of Mount Asubha somehow had been removed. She could have controlled him more easily if the poison were still in his body. But this was not the end of the world. Her plan was proceeding well enough, regardless.

In order to achieve ultimate success, she needed to keep the Death-Knower alive—at least, for now. His crazy wanderings inside Kamupadana were threatening her plans, so she would have to lend a hand—or wing, if necessary—to make sure he didn’t stumble into something that was too big for his britches.

This batch of
undines
wasn’t her idea, anyway—though what Invictus planned to do with her wicked little creatures was beyond her comprehension. Of course, the spoiled little Sun God hadn’t asked for her opinion, now had he? Why was everyone always stepping on her turf? If they would just move aside and let her run things, then the worlds would be a better place. With Vedana as queen, life would be one big party. Why was she the only one who got it?

As Torg headed for the second wall, he fretted over how much time remained before daylight. Was it enough? He wasn’t sure.

At thirty cubits, the second wall was the third tallest and third most heavily guarded. While the ninth wall was ten miles long, the second was only a mile long with each side of the square measuring eight hundred and eighty cubits. Torg had a mind for numbers and remembered this even centuries later. The royal priestesses, ancient rulers of Kamupadana but now eager servants of the Warlish witches, occupied four castles within this wall.

The royal priestesses were lore masters. Their magic came from spells and incantations, not from innate ability. Stripped of books, talismans, wands and weapons, they became quite ordinary. But the extent of their knowledge was not. The priestesses had the lore—and the witches the power—to summon the
undines
. Together they were a formidable pairing.

Three iron portcullises, suspended by chains and lowered into deep grooves, defended the only visible gateway through the second wall. Torg lay in the shadows and explored his options, admitting he had few. Scaling the wall would be difficult if not impossible; it was too smooth and sheer. And if he tried to force his way through the gateway, he would attract far too much attention. A pair of guards stood outside the first portcullis, and he knew many more would reside within.

A paved road extended a thousand paces from the third wall to the second. From his hiding place, Torg watched the approach of a group of soldiers, each bearing a silver pentagram on her breastplate. The soldiers escorted a covered litter carried on long poles by sixteen eunuchs, who wore brown cloaks and straw sandals and whose heads were shaved. A Sāykan captain blew three blasts on an ivory horn. In response, the first portcullis creaked upward. Several soldiers emerged to greet the captain. Torg was close enough to hear their discussion.

“We must be permitted to enter,” the captain said. “We bear evidence of a conspiracy.”

“Ur-Nammu has ordered that none shall pass within the second wall tonight,” one of the guards said. “Something big is going on in the ziggurat, but it’s all hush-hush. What’s your conspiracy?”

“See for yourself,” the captain said.

The guard lifted the curtain and peered into the litter. Then she stepped back, amazed.

“Pass through. We will lead you to the front steps of the temple.”

Just then, one of the guards on the wall walk above the gateway let out a shout. A large black bird had streaked from the sky and taken a chunk out of her ear. Torg heard more shouts as the raven attacked again, prompting laughter. The guard drew her dagger and slashed at it, cursing. The eunuchs didn’t seem to notice when the weight of the litter increased by more than twenty stones; they too seemed to be enjoying the unexpected entertainment, though they did not laugh.

Archers took aim at the bird, but its movements were so frenetic they could not even loose an arrow. As if losing interest in its quarry, the raven swerved away, flew down along the wall and zoomed past the litter, cawing loudly before soaring back into the sky.

More laughter followed. Finally, the guards ordered the eunuchs forward, and they carried the litter through the gateway. Torg hung from its underside, clinging to iron bands. His view was limited, but he could see the lowest steps of one of the castles about a hundred paces to his right. Soon they would pass within the first wall and approach the most ancient edifice in the known world.

The ziggurat towered more than three hundred cubits above the ground and was shaped like a pyramid with receding tiers built upon a square platform. When Torg had first seen it centuries before, he had remarked that it resembled a gigantic layered cake. The witches had not been amused.

From the outside, the ziggurat contained only one known opening—a massive set of double doors on the ninth story. A wide stairway led up to that entryway. Further enhancing its exotic appearance, the ziggurat had no windows. In their place, thousands of fist-sized holes punctured the walls. When the double doors were bolted shut, the building was impervious to attack from anything other than an army of snakes. Even so, it had not been designed to be a fortress. Whoever built it had intended it as a place of worship—to gods long forgotten, even by the Sāykans.

Torg’s grip on the underside of the litter had been precarious from the start. But if he let go, hundreds of soldiers would discover him. Just when he thought he could hold on no longer, the party passed within the first wall, rejuvenating his resolve. The base of the ziggurat loomed just a few dozen paces away. When they started up the stairway, Torg let out a silent sigh of relief.

Finally they reached the ninth story, and the iron doors creaked open.

“We must see Ur-Nammu,” he heard the Sāykan captain demand.

“No one may enter,” a female voice answered.

“We wouldn’t be so rude if the urgency of our mission did not require immediate attention,” the captain said. “If we cannot see Ur-Nammu, then allow us to present our evidence to Jākita-Abhinno or one of the other witches.”

Whoever greeted them turned and spoke to someone inside the edifice. After a heated exchange, she allowed the caravan to enter a chamber containing hundreds of lighted candles.

Just before the doors clanged shut, a burst of wind swirled through the opening, though the night was otherwise calm. This extinguished the candles and caused the room to go dark, except for dim pricks of starlight peeking through the fist-sized holes. Panic ensued, and the eunichs dropped the litter to the floor with a loud thud. But Torg had already used the confusion to his advantage, rolling out from beneath the litter and then crawling unnoticed to the far wall. Once a few of the candles were re-lighted, swords were drawn. But Torg now crouched in a corner, unseen.

“Hold
 . . .
hold
!” the captain said. “We are not enemies
 . . .
hold
!”

“What happened?” the woman who had greeted them shouted. “What devilry have you brought with youuuu?”

“None of which I am aware,” the captain said. “But even without devilry, my tidings are not good. Look within the curtains and see for yourself.”

Torg recognized the greeter’s voice. It belonged to Jākita-dEsa, one of the hag servants of Jākita-Abhinno, whom Torg imagined was now the most powerful Warlish witch in the world now that Chal-Abhinno was missing. All Warlish witches used the surname Abhinno, which meant
witch
in the ancient tongue. Their hags used the same first name as their assigned master along with the surname dEsa, which meant
servant
.

This Jākita-dEsa was the most powerful of her master’s brood. She also was the most attractive, locked forever in a state of beauty—which is why Torg remembered her so clearly. To those outside the coven, this would have been considered a stroke of luck, but to the hags, neither eternal beauty nor ugliness was superior. Beauty had the advantage of seduction, but ugliness inspired fear. Both were powerful weapons.

Jākita-dEsa peered into the litter, but Torg was not in a position to see what lay within.

“How did they die?” Jākita-dEsa said.

“The merchant appears to have ended his own life,” the Sāykan captain said. “The hag was struck in the back by a dagger. I might be wrong, but the force and accuracy of the throw has the feel of a Tugar.”

The merchant
?
So you are brave, after all.

“Issss it possible a Tugar is in the city without our knowing it?” Jākita-dEsa said.

“Our contacts believe the desert warriors haven’t ventured north of Senasana,” the captain said. “But a single Tugar—perhaps an Asēkha—might have been sent to spy on us. If that’s true, they might know more than the witches or priestesses believe. Do you still desire to thwart us?”

“Thwarting the Sāykans has never been my desire,” the beautiful hag said. “What you do not sssseem to understand is that the witches and the priestesses are—how shall I ssssay it?—
indisposed
. I could not interrupt them, even if I wanted to.”

“Very well, sister,” the captain said, with an air of concession. “Nonetheless, I will triple the guard within the first gate. The ill wind disturbed me. This would not be an opportune time for the ziggurat to be breached.”

“I agree,” Jākita-dEsa said. “Let ussss rush to our duties.”

As their banter was coming to an end, Torg moved quickly downward and soon had descended to the sixth floor. In his wake, one witch, a pair of hags and four soldiers lay dead on the smooth stone steps of a winding interior stairway leading to the bottom of the edifice. To Torg’s dismay, he had found no place to hide the bodies.

The walls of the dark stairway were lined with marble statues, alternating between gorgeous women and hideous crones in a variety of poses. These were relatively new to the ziggurat, the witches having placed them there after taking control of the ancient edifice. Torg took a liking to them, but not for their artistry. Instead, they provided numerous nooks and crannies for him to hide. And yet he already had been twice discovered: first by the witch and hags, who had stared at him with puzzled expressions before their heads left their bodies, and second by guards striding up the stairs to relieve others stationed above.

The decapitated witches and hags had spewed gray-black smoke that stank. Not wanting it to attract others, Torg had been forced to inhale it into his lungs. The poisons would have killed an ordinary person, but they did no harm to Torg—other than leaving a nasty taste in his mouth.

Where the winding stair intersected each floor, he stopped and listened. But he did so with more than just his ears. A thousand years of meditative practice had given him precise control over his concentrative abilities, and his awareness of his surroundings far exceeded ordinary levels. Torg could detect the slightest movement, hear the subtlest sound, smell the faintest odor, feel the tiniest change in temperature. If magic were about—especially of the magnitude it would take to summon
undines
—Torg would sense it when he drew near, even if it were hidden behind heavy stone walls.

The deeper he descended, the more he became convinced that the barrels lay at the base of the temple, either on the first floor or below the surface. During his only visit to the ziggurat two centuries before, Torg had been invited to descend only as far as the fourth floor, so he already was approaching uncharted territory.

The air in the deeper portions of the temple was choked with a bog-like mist, and the stone steps were oily and slick. The lower he went, the darker it became. Torg moved in a silent crouch, his weapon drawn. But the Silver Sword remained cold. Whatever magic existed within the ziggurat did not affect the supernal blade.

Or so Torg thought. At one point, a pair of guards came up the stairs, and he was forced to kneel behind one of the statues until they passed. After they were gone, the point of the sword accidentally came in contact with the wall. At that instant, the blade glowed as if on fire, illuminating the darkness. As soon as Torg removed it from the stone, it winked out. He was amazed. The otherworldly stone of the ziggurat was in some way akin to the metal used to forge the sword.

When he reached the second level, Torg finally recognized an effusion of magic somewhere beneath him. The density of the walls and floors absorbed most, but not all, of the conjuration. He sensed movement at the base of the stairs. He could hear female voices chanting phrases from the ancient tongue, though the words were too faint to decipher. He crept down a step at a time.

Torg saw that the first floor consisted of a single chamber with a tall ceiling. In the center was a wide but shallow pool. Standing in knee-deep water were Ur-Nammu, the high priestess of Kamupadana, and Jākita-Abhinno, whom Torg was certain had become newly crowned queen of the Warlish witches.

“
Mara-maccha, pariyuttha
(Devil fish, arise),” the priestess chanted. “
Pavisatha udakam parisuddham
(Enter the holy water).”

Jākita-Abhinno writhed in the clear waters of the pool, transforming from beautiful to ugly and back again, amid explosions of red light and putrid smoke. At least one hundred other witches mimicked her movements. Meanwhile, dozens of hags scooped water from the pool with silver goblets and poured it into nearby barrels. The
undines
were being stored for future use.

Just then, Torg heard cries from above. The dead bodies must have been discovered. But the participants in the bizarre ceremony beneath him—more than two hundred women, including witches, hags and other priestesses—appeared too enraptured to notice the disturbance. Torg stepped into the chamber and walked nonchalantly toward the barrels. At first he wasn’t even seen. Then the women emerged from their trances and turned toward him. Torg approached the oak barrels, raised the Silver Sword and began to hack at them. The wood split apart as easily as parchment, spilling the contents onto the stone floor.